Life can be pretty good in the Back Bay if you have the kind of money to buy Tom and Giselle's $10.5 million Back Bay crash pad.

If that's too rich for your wallet, breaking a million just might get you something half decent, but no guarantees.

But is it worth it trying to squeeze into a closet-sized condo in the Back Bay - or for that matter the South End or Beacon Hill - if you can't go above $500,000, let alone $1 million?

That's the world shaking question Trulia explores in an in-depth blog post on the Boston market.

Looking for a bargain? Head west to 495.

I compared home prices along Greater Boston's two great technology and commercial beltways, 128 and 495 for a column I do for the Globe West, Forever 128.

Along 128, Burlington, with a median price of nearly $400,000, is closing on its 2005 price peak, while Weston, at $1.4 million, has surpassed its previous high-water mark of $1.3 million set that same year.

Other 128 towns such as Newton, Needham and Lexington all saw median prices drop this past year, yet all are within 10 percent of the highs reached during the height of the housing bubble in 2005-2006.

But along 495, it's a much different story.

Is is time to bequeath our society's greatest honor - that of aggrieved victim - to homeowners who bought during the housing bubble?

Apparently some on the comment board of this blog think so now.

It can tend to be a pretty conservative bunch, so I was a bit surprised by this sally.

Here's what thirtysomething had to say:

The underwater homeowners are exactly what I'm talking about! They were VICTIMIZED by high housing prices. You seem to think this is a good thing -- so good, in fact, that we need more of the same to "rescue" them? Not saying that is impossible, but that's simply passing the hot potato (and high costs) to a new victim.

High real estate prices are bad for society. Good for banks, bad for everybody else (aside from those seeking to profit at the expense of others).

Half of all apartment dwellers nationwide are now "rent burdened."

That means they are coughing up 30 percent or more of their income for rent, finds a new report by the University of New Hampshire's Carsey Institute.

By comparison, the number of homeowners shelling out 30 percent or more of their paychecks on mortgage payments stands at a much lower 37.4 percent.

In fact, the number of homeowners struggling under heavier mortgage payments is about the same as it was before the recession, according to the study, which analyzed housing data from 2007-2010.

Stuck in an underwater condo in East Boston he is weary of, Beantown-dan is groping desperately for an escape hatch.

He figures he can now finally afford a modest home in the suburbs, but can't easily get out from under the mortgage on his Eastie condo, which is $20,000 to $30,000 above the current market value of his unit.

Beantown-dan is thinking of renting out his condo and then trying to buy - which might get him out of his current jam but would put him on the hook for even more real estate debt.

If you owe more on your mortgage than your house is worth, you are hardly alone, even here in perpetually price-inflated Greater Boston.

Just over one in five Boston area homeowners - 22 percent - were underwater on their mortgages as of the end of the first quarter in March, Zillow.com reports.

Moreover, about half were underwater by 20 percent or less, with the rest buried under even heavier loads of debt, that, at the very extreme, is double what their homes are worth.

The suburbs just to the west and southwest of Boston - that broad arc from Burlington down through Foxboro - have the least number of underwater homeowners, according to Zillow.

What's your choice: Sticks or city living?

I'll let Twirlygirl get the debate going this morning. She and her husband have one child and love living in the city. Even as bargain prices beckon from the 495 belt and beyond, she's determined to wait until they find the right place in Boston or Cambridge.

For Twirlygirl, it's a matter of sanity and even of being able to be "good mom."

The suburbs, with few exceptions, fill me with ennui. I would be rather miserable and wouldn't be a good mom if I was living too far out, far from the ability to get into the city, far from what feels like being alive. My husband mostly feels the same way.

No mincing words there.

We are primed for a home price turnaround in Greater Boston and across Massachusetts.

And we are not talking about 2013 or some other distant year in the future, but the next several months.

That's the verdict from Tim Warren, chief executive of The Warren Group, after the release this morning of home sales and price numbers for April by his Boston-based real estate data firm and publisher.

Warren points to the combo of falling unemployment and rock bottom interest rates as the key factor behind the budding rebound.

The number of modest capes, split levels and even colonials getting bulldozed is on the rise in Greater Boston's more affluent suburbs.

Here's a pretty interesting take from a West Newton architect in the heart of teardown country, which recently appeared as a letter to the editor in the Globe.

The architect, Anatol Zuckerman would like to see teardowns replaced with multifamily housing, though to be fair, he doesn't exactly call for a teardown ban. (In fact, he makes some great observations on why it is so difficult to get towns to face up to this issue.)

Still, it's an issue that is of far greater importance than simply to the buyers with the bucks for the $1 million-plus homes that are replacing all these more modest 1950s and 60s homes.

After all, the Boston area has long suffered from a shortage of decent, reasonably priced middle-class housing and it is a trend that is only getting worse.

How things have changed. Real estate brokers who spent years trying to drum up scarce buyers are now having to sweet talk reluctant sellers into listing their homes.

The buyers are definitely out there again this spring, both here in Greater Boston and in other major metro markets across the country.

But buyers are looking for a bargain. They sense the price declines won't go on forever, yet they also want something decent for their money. And with many potential sellers still skittish and unwilling to take the plunge, there has been a growing mismatch between demand and supply.

Check out this BloombergBusinessweek article - it looks at the seller shortage across the country and how it is driving bidding wars for ready-to-move-into homes that are reasonably priced.

Locally, bidding wars out now the norm in Cambridge, Newton and Lexington, notes Redfin in this blog post that went up yesterday.

That's how Jonathan in Millbury feels about his decision to buy in Central Massachusetts.

After all, he works as a project management consultant in Kendall Square and could have easily settled for a condo in the Boston area.

But instead, he's now living his version of the American Dream in a three bedroom, 1,500-square-foot ranch he bought for the low $200,000s in 2007, complete with a "nice level yard with woods."

After reading my recent post on bargain towns below $200,000, Jonathan fired off an email asking why I had left out Millbury. (No slight, just missed it as I was looking over median price records.)

Sure, I could have purchased a condo in the Boston area. But I don't see the value of living in a condo and paying a condo fee. I like having a yard and taking care of my home. And my neighbors are awesome.

That's the latest theory on what caused the housing bubble - and it makes a certain sense.

A new Boston Fed paper takes aim at the profusion of studies and documentaries that try to pin the blame for the housing bubble on the machinations of a few greedy Wall Street types. (Thanks gmbc for pointing this one out.)

Instead, it was the average buyer, borrowing to the hilt and beyond to grab a house in the belief that prices would just keep on going up, who drove the runaway prices of the bubble years, the Fed paper suggests.

It's certainly a provocative theory - and one very current now as the real estate market starts to recover and prices in some of Greater Boston's more affluent suburbs head up again.

In fact, for all those who are feeling a bit optimistic again - including me - the Fed researchers offer a very timely warning at the end.

There are actually a few towns in Massachusetts where you can now buy a home for less than six figures.

In a state where the median price remains a lofty $267,500, this handful of communities stands out.

The question is not whether you could get a relative bargain, but whether it's worth rolling the dice.

Buying in some of these communities could be a gamble - a few are struggling with major problems, such as the crippling loss of old industries or school systems beset with major challenges.

Yet the same could be said of many areas that are now considered hot spots in the local real estate market. There are a whole bunch of Boston, Cambridge and Somerville neighborhoods that a few decades were anything but hot.

Yes, even in high-priced Massachusetts, you can buy a house now for under $200,000.

In many parts of the country where housing has long been more affordable, this would hardly be worth the notice. After all, the median price nationally is $158,100, and falling.

But here in the Bay State, with prices on the rise again in the more affluent Greater Boston suburbs and in coveted or hip urban locales, all in Boston or Cambridge, it is worth remembering that we are dealing with two very different real estate markets here.

Beyond the gilded burbs, prices have fallen a lot steeper and continue to erode.

If you want a bargain in overpriced Greater Boston, you have to look where the real estate downturn has hit the hardest.

While some of the more affluent western suburbs, as well as a few of the more picturesque towns on the North and South Shores, are seeing prices rise again, that's not the case in many of their less glamorous neighbors.

There are lots of towns now where a house can be had for less than $300,000, I noted yesterday. And while there are fewer members of the under $250,000 club, they are out there - often small industrial cities in the midst of transition or small towns that are a little rough around the edges.

I thought dreston78 put it well in his comment yesterday.

I realize no one wants to live in Brockton, Worcester, Haverhill, Methuen, Lawrence or Lowell (except for the hundreds of thousands of people that actually do) but those are some markets that have been crushed by the bursting of the bubble. A decent home can be had for under $200,000 in anyone of those areas and plenty of new/newer construction in the $300K to $350K range.

Weary of looking at worn out, overpriced homes selling for half a million or more?

The good news is that it's still possible to buy below $300,000, with a whole bunch of towns and neighborhoods with prices in the $200,000s now.

But they are not in the the posh burbs and hip urban neighborhoods everyone is beating down the door to get into - and which have seen prices relentlessly rise right through the downturn.

And more often than not, you may end up with a tougher commute - and a fair amount of fixing up to do as well.

But then again, you won't find yourself saddled with a $500,000 mortgage either.

Here's my list, drawn from the real estate records of Banker & Tradesman. Today we'll tackle the suburbs, tomorrow the world. Just kidding, next week I will look at bargain-basement urban alternatives for those frustrated with Davis Square and other overpriced, over-hyped neighborhoods.

If you don't have a bottom line number and you are house hunting here in Greater Boston, get one and get one fast.

By bottom line number, I mean a number or threshold price that you won't go beyond, at least without some very serious consideration and, if you are married or in a couple, some hard-fought debate.

Sure, everyone can benefit from this, but having a budget and sticking to it is especially important here in the Boston area. After years of tough times, it remains one of the most overpriced housing markets in the country.

So what does that mean? Well if you are in that broad range of middle-income buyers, you are always going to be tempted to stretch in order to get a more palatable house.

After all, the options for middle-income buyers looking in the $300,000-to-$400,000 range, especially inside the 128 beltway, are not likely to blow anyone away.

Certainly seems so from the latest numbers.

Pending home sales surged more than 35 percent in April compared to the year before, the Massachusetts Association of Realtors reports this morning.

A total of 4,784 homes were put under agreement in April, meaning there should be a sizable sales jump when those deals close in June and July.

Still, there are always reasons to be cautious, something the numerous housing bears on the comment board will be happy to hear me say.

Teardowns are back.

After stalling during the Great Recession, teardowns are on the rise again in some of Greater Boston's more affluent suburbs.

Wellesley, Needham, Newton and Lexington have all seen a jump in teardowns over the past year of older, more modestly-sized homes, I report in a Globe West story that ran yesterday.

Needham appears to be leading the charge, with 82 last year, compared to 58 in 2009.

And it is a trend that has big implications for middle-income buyers trying to get a foothold in one of the country's most expensive housing markets.

So says Trulia, which has jumped into the potentially risky business of predicting future price and rent trends.

While most of the major housing indexes track past sales, and as a result lag the market by months, Trulia contends that tracking asking prices and asking rents can offer a window to where the market in headed in two or three months.

The theory is what sellers and landlords are asking for now will end up being reflected in sales and leases in the next quarter. (Check out this Calculated Risk post on Trulia's approach, which does a great job laying it all out.)

If that's the case, then we could soon be moving from price deflation to price increases here in the Boston area, and possibly even double digit rent increases by year end.

Certainly seems so based on Lauren's effort to unload her three-bedroom cape in South Weymouth for $309,000.

I recently blogged here about Lauren's struggles to find a buyer - she's been getting lots of traffic but no offers since she put her home on the market in February.

I suggested she replace the ugly mustard colored carpet and the advice flooded in on the comment board.

So much for that. While there were others in the cosmetic camp, the comment board was overwhelmed with suggestions that Lauren lower her price.

Instead of $310,000, she should be looking at $270,000 or $280,000, suggested fu1eye.

This spring has seen a flood of homes hitting the market in Greater Boston.

Like the recent rains, it is a badly needed inundation for a parched real estate landscape dominated by overpriced homes in need of work. It's still tough out there, but at least there are more homes to check out.

So where to look?

Suffolk County, which is mainly Boston and a couple inner suburbs/cities, saw the biggest inventory bump, rising 35.6 percent, Redfin notes.

Middlesex County, which includes the western suburbs, came in a close second, with a 32.6 percent rise in listings in March.

We are back to the 1990s when it comes to homeownership.

Nationally, the percentage of homeowners has dropped from a high of more than 69 percent in the early 2004 down to 65.4 percent at the end of the first quarter, Bloomberg News reports.

It's the lowest since 1997. And it appears to be an accelerating trend - the homeownership rate has dropped a full percentage point over the last year alone. When it comes to statistics, that qualifies as a plunge, not just a drop.

In fact, experts are predicting continued declines for the rest of this decade - at the current pace that could push the homeownership rate below 60 percent by 2020.

Yet despite the gloomy national numbers, this is one trend Massachusetts is bucking.

That's the dilemma "Josh" in Jamaica Plain is grappling with right now.

He and his siblings own a two-family in JP they want to sell in order to bolster their parents' retirement income.

The house is in a great location between Centre Street and the Jamaica Way across from an elementary school.

Josh acknowledges the house is older and needs a little touching up, but hopes that rising demand in a relatively hot market like JP will encourage buyers to open their wallets anyway.

So should he list now or wait?

For all the talk about bidding wars, for many sellers, it's still a tough market out there.

Yes, the open houses are bustling and there are clearly more people out there looking around this spring. And sales are up markedly, as I noted here a couple days ago.

But many houses are still sitting, drawing interest, but no offers, as one would-be seller in South Weymouth is finding out.

Lauren bought bought her three bedroom Cape back in 2008 for $300,000 and is now looking to sell for $309,000.

Even then, she will still be in the red, having pumped an estimated $25,000 into various upgrades, from renovating the bathroom to new windows and a new heating system.

Here's a link to the house. It comes with a good yard - a half acre, which is unusual for South Weymouth, Lauren notes.

Yet while there is no lack of traffic since she put her house on the market in February - Lauren's getting ready for her seventh open house this weekend - there have been no offers yet.

And Lauren finds herself wondering whether it's the price that's the culprit right now, or the ugly, mustard colored carpet on the second floor that came with the house.

I frequently talk to young parents who are daunted by their inability to get into the real estate market. Even with dropping prices and low interest rates, the prospect of saving for a down payment and paying our still-inflated prices seems impossible. It shouldn’t be this way, they say, we are earning a lot of money, but it just doesn’t go far enough. They have a professional income, or two, but they feel far from rich.

Whether you are a renter or an owner, the greater Boston area is a very hard place to live, economically. Housing has a big part in that. What does it say about an area, when $91,600 is our area median household income (AMI)? What does it mean for people who are starting out? For those that are looking toward retirement? For those that find themselves unemployed or under-employed? What does it mean to you, in dollars and cents?

Crittenton’s Women’s Union has developed a tool to calculate what income a family needs to make ends meet. Around here, the Economic Independence level is rather high, compared with many places in the country. Try it.

OK, calling a bottom to the now years-long decline in home prices is risky business.

Eventually someone will get it right, but predicting an imminent turnaround in prices is more likely to leave you looking like a fool rather than some market sage.

Yet the predictions keep coming, with Zillow.com the latest to roll the dice.

Zillow contends Boston area home prices hit bottom in the first quarter. Better yet, Zillow sees a .3 percent rise in prices over the next year.

That comes after a painful decline of more than 2 percent over the past year, with the Zillow Home Value Index for the Boston area now just over $300,000. (Zillow looks not just at sale prices, but also assessed values.)

At least for homes attractive enough or priced right to get an offer, yes, multiple offers may very well be the new norm.

That's what Redfin contends it is seeing in Greater Boston. Roughly 54 percent of the homes Redfin agents wrote offers on in March wound up "in bidding wars with prices literally rising before our agents' and clients' very eyes," the online real estate brokerage reports in its Boston Sweet Digs blog.

Of course, we are hardly talking about every home on the market - these are houses that had enough going for them to get at least one offer.

Home sales rose by more than 19 percent in March compared to last spring, The Warren Group reports this morning.

But even more significantly, it was the best March, and the best first quarter as well, in terms of overall home sales in Massachusetts since the spring of 2007, before the Great Recession hit.

So is it time to declare victory and break out the champagne? Are the hard times in real estate finally at an end?

I stand with Meliss173 who is tired of our arm-chair experts who think that there are no bidding wars and agents are duping silly buyers into paying too much with phantom offers. Yes, there are some phantoms. I try to arm buyers against such games.

There was a supply shortage last year, and there is one again this year.
It is unhelpful to buyers in the current market to deny the reality of the low supply and high demand on reasonable housing for a family within a half hour commute of Boston. Whenever the subject is broached, the parade of bears starts screaming that prices need to go down. Well, furry ones, price is not going to go down when there is a low supply and a high demand. The shadow inventory is not the inventory that young families want or need.

My company is keeping a list of MLS numbers of house and condos that we, personally, knew had bidding wars. When everything closes, we’ll put it together as a report for our clients. I intend to do one for BREN, too. If you want me to track a particular house, send me the MLS number. Please title your email “BREN bidding war.” I will wait until sometime in July, when things slow down, and check all the sales information on these so-called “hot houses.”

More homes are getting snapped amid the best spring market since the Great Recession. And sellers in Boston's western suburbs are jumping back into the market after staying clear for years.

That's what Redfin's Boston team recently found when it tallied the inventory of homes for sale this spring in Middlesex County.

The number of listings in the county, which straddles some of the wealthiest burbs in the country, is up 30 percent over last March.

Of course, the upsurge in sales, which rose more than 26 percent in February, is what has revived hope among sellers depressed after years of a dead or declining market.

Tired of being all but being called chumps on the comment board of this blog, some buyers are pushing back.

We all know the Greater Boston market is not an easy one to get a foothold in, especially if you are looking in the $250,000 to $400,000 range.

That said, there are still many solid reasons to buy instead of rent, especially if you are looking to start a family and plan to stay put for a reasonable amount of time. Conventional thinking is five years, though I'd argue at least a decade.

If you want to keep renting, go right ahead, that's great. But while it may be challenging to buy in the Boston area, don't give up on that option if that is what you want to do.

If you a $400,000-and-below buyer, and you want to stay near or within the 128 beltway, I can all but guarantee that you are not going to find your dream home. That said, there is no reason you can't find a house you can be happy with or at least has potential.

However, meliss173 argued the case much more eloquently than I am doing right now in a series of recent comments.

It's something to consider, especially with the National Association of Realtors going all out to promote its annual open house weekend on April 28-29.

If you are a seller getting pressured by your agent to take part, you might want to think it over.

Open houses are ostensibly for the benefit of sellers. But sadly for sellers, the open house can be a high pain, small gain proposition.

If you are looking at a home or selling one, and keeping one eye nervously trained on your job, you are not alone.

Yes, the economy is picking up, but anxiety about the job market is still fairly strong out in the real estate market, a new survey finds.

The vast majority of buyers and sellers across the state are either still mildly or seriously concerned about job loss, according to a monthly survey of market sentiment by the Massachusetts Association of Realtors.

Sixty-one percent of Realtors polled said their clients, both buyers and sellers, were mildly worried, while 30 percent still have significant concerns.

Check out this Calculated Risk post on what's really happened with home prices.

The major real estate indexes - Case-Shiller and CoreLogic to name two - have been reporting that prices are back to 2002 and 2003 levels.

But account for inflation, and home prices in real terms have dropped all the way to 1998-2000 levels, Calculated Risk finds.

Basically, all the home price gains piled up during the reckless 2000s have vanished!

The idea that buyers are chumps, easily conned into blowing hundreds of thousands on overpriced homes by slick real estate agents, is remarkably patronizing.

Yet it is a theme sounded all too often on the comment board for this blog by some otherwise very sharp and insightful observers of the Greater Boston real estate market.

This is probably one of the toughest real estate markets in the country for middle class buyers to get a foothold in.

There are simply too many people with fairly decent incomes vying for a limited pool of overpriced, run down homes.

It was true a decade ago in the Boston market and it is true today, despite all the dramatic changes we have seen in the economy and in real estate in general over the last several years.

Buyers braving the market in the Boston area deserve empathy - not ridicule. Yes, real estate can be a racket, but why pick on poor buyers?

The idea that buyers are chumps, easily conned into blowing hundreds of thousands on overpriced homes by slick real estate agents, is remarkably patronizing.

Yet it is a theme sounded all too often on the comment board for this blog by some otherwise very sharp and insightful observers of the Greater Boston real estate market.

This is probably one of the toughest real estate markets in the country for middle class buyers to get a foothold in.

There are simply too many people with fairly decent incomes vying for a limited pool of overpriced, run down homes.

It was true a decade ago in the Boston market and it is true today, despite all the dramatic changes we have seen in the economy and in real estate in general over the last several years.

Buyers braving the market in the Boston area deserve empathy - not ridicule. Real estate can certainly be a racket, but why pick on poor buyers?

Renting is hot now. But the choices and prices available for renters still lag significantly compared to what's available on the for-sale market.

Boston area rents jumped another 6 percent in the first quarter, RentJuice reports.

That brings the average asking rent in Boston, Cambridge and the inner suburbs to $2,332 for a two bedroom apartment.

That's a pretty decent sized mortgage payment, all for a two bedroom. It's about what I pay in Natick for my modestly sized, four bedroom fixer-upper. And I have a home office on the second floor and a potential spare bedroom on the first floor, which just might come in handy someday given the ways things are going right now with my elderly parents.

You can do a lot with 1,800 square feet, if you can configure it the way you want it - something you can do if you are a homeowner, not a renter.

I'd argue it's a bit of both, but let's check out some numbers.

Just looking at Boston, the number of homes going under agreement in three days or less has steadily fallen over the past three months, Redfin reports.

Roughly 10 percent of homes that have hit the market this spring in the Hub have gone under agreement in three days or less.

That's down from an earlier Redfin estimate from late March, which pegged the number at 15 percent.

Moreover, the trend appears to be a downward one, with just 6 percent of homes that hit the market in Boston in the month ending April 12 getting scooped up in 72 hours.

If you have ever gone house hunting in Greater Boston, you know what I am talking about.

These are dingy homes in need of all sorts of work, listed at prices that anywhere else in the country would command a half decent split-level or even colonial.

And they are zombies because they have been kicking around for years, coming on and off the market in thinly disguised attempts to mask the fact that no one out there is biting.

I am sure there are more than a few that came back on the market this spring as new listings, having been pulled over the winter.

Here's Bill Kuhlman, CRS, who is the broker/owner of Kuhlman Residential with a market graph he found interesting.

I want to share one of my favorite graphs I’ve seen in a while. It tracks the home value histories for Boston and Miami between 1990 and 2011. (Boston is in red; Miami is in blue.) What I like about it is that it illustrates the reality versus what I believe is a commonly held perception of the Boston real estate market over the past ten years.

The graph tracks the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA)’s monthly house pricing index (HPI) for the two cities. According to the current info on Wikipedia, “The HPI is a weighted, repeat-sales index, meaning that it measures average price changes in repeat sales or refinancings on the same properties in 363 metropolises. This information is obtained by reviewing repeat mortgage transactions on single-family properties whose mortgages have been purchased or securitized by Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac.”

The Case-Shiller Index, often touted as perhaps the most accurate house pricing index out there, uses a modified version of this type of index.

Before anyone accuses me of cherry-picking my data, I want to point out that this graph is plucked from a presentation I saw recently. I didn’t look at all kinds of HPI comparisons between Boston and other cities, choose the one that best makes my point, then make a graph out of it.

What it shows is that from the first quarter of 1990 through the first quarter of 2004, the HPIs for Boston and Miami are very similar, never deviating from one another by more than maybe $20,000 or $25,000. And the two lines are virtually on top of one another between 1991 and 2000.

Pending home sales soared nearly 39 percent in March.

A total of 4,519 homes were put under agreement last month, up sharply from 3,256 last March, the Massachusetts Association of Realtors reports.

The number of condos put under agreement was also up more than 30 percent over March 2011, hitting 1,854.

This surge in activity begs the obvious question: Will prices be headed up soon as well?

Bidding wars are back, and not just in Greater Boston, but in other markets across the country.

Just ask the Hensleys, who felt compelled to include a family portrait along with their $270,000 bid for a three-bedroom home in suburban Seattle. In fact, they also included a letter describing how the house, which backs into a wooded hillside, would be perfect for their growing family, BloombergBusinessweek reports.

They even threw in $10,000 more than the asking price. Here's a quote from the Hensleys, which I have lifted from the story.

"We understand there is going to be fierce competition in the offers made for your house but Carina and I both felt very strong about letting you know what it would mean to us if we were given the opportunity to live in your gorgeous and charming house," wrote Matthew Hensley, 33, a credit union branch manager whose wife is a dental hygienist.

Asking rents in the Boston area jumped a whopping 9.2 percent during the first quarter over early 2011, Trulia reports.

Hub apartment owners didn't quite lead the nation in their zeal to cash in, but they came close, with asking rents jumping 12.1 percent in Miami in 11.1 percent in San Francisco.

It is a wallop to the wallet of local renters that comes even as home sellers in the Boston area finally get a firmer grip on reality.

Meet Franksmartin, an unabashed cheerleader for living the life in hip urban neighborhoods like Davis Square.

When I knocked the idea of paying hundreds of thousands more to live in Davis or Cambridge as opposed to Quincy or Medford, Franksmartin, who lives in Porter Square, was ready with his zinger.

If I think it is nuts to blow money just to live with the hipsters, he thinks it's crazy to squander your money to live in some suburban bore-fest.

Now I like my Natick fixer-upper and the fact that I can walk with my kids to the center of town, which has come a long way over the past few years. It's a long way from boring.

But I'll concede that it's far from hip.

Bill Kuhlman, CRS, who is the broker/owner of Kuhlman Residential wants your opinion on a policy idea.

And now for something completely different: I wanted to give readers of this blog the opportunity to potentially influence the shaping of public policy, during the early stages of discussion of an issue.

The Massachusetts Association of Realtors (MAR), in conjunction with Northeastern University’s School of Public Policy and Urban Affairs, is looking into the question of whether or not it would be a good idea or a bad idea for Massachusetts to follow the lead of some other states and make it possible for homeowners to purchase home value insurance, also known as home price protection insurance. This type of policy would pay a homeowner if they are forced to sell their homes for less than they owe. Some pay if the homeowner sells for less than they paid.

These policies have been offered in Ohio for a couple of years, and have received mixed reviews. Different policies offer different levels of premiums and benefits, but the basic idea is if you sell your home for less than you owe or paid, the policy will pay a pre-determined percentage of your loss. The higher that percentage, or the longer the period of coverage, the higher the total cost of your premiums. I don’t know many of the details, but they come with a time-related deductible, to reduce attempts to game the system.

Here are some questions the people who will eventually make recommendations to legislators and other policy makers might want to know:

It works in the movies. But it's a bad idea in real life, especially when it comes to buying a home.

The last thing you want to do is lead with emotion when making a major financial decision.

But that's not what all those perky real estate brokers out there want you to do - they want you to get all warm and fuzzy and forget about the numbers just long enough to get hooked.

So it's hardly a shocker to see Coldwell Banker releasing a survey that plays up the idea that buyers are leading with their hearts instead of their brains.

Ah, the hipness premium. Seems downright dumb and shallow to me, but I am clearly in the minority given the silly amounts of money people are willing to blow to live in a trendy neighborhood.

Take a mediocre condo or house in need of work, plunk it down in JP, Davis Square, Cambridge, or the South End, and suddenly you are talking big bucks.

But is that cramped two-bedroom really worth hundreds of thousands of more because it is in Davis Square instead of Quincy, or the South End instead of Medford?

Artiefufkin hit it on the head with this comment on my post on buying for the long haul.

"Something I've noticed about the Boston area real-estate market is that the premium for hipness seems to be irrationally high," he writes. "It simply isn't rational to pay an extra $200k for a condo simply so that you can walk to cool restaurants rather than having to drive 10 minutes or take a 10 minute subway ride."

Don't want to get burned by real estate?

Well then you'd better take the long view - and be a little big savvy about when you buy and sell as well.

Here's an enlightening comment from MWK, who made out like a bandit in the South End after buying in the mid 80s and then selling two decades later in 2004.

He then took his profits and bought a home in Quincy as the real estate bubble neared its peak.

Now MWK's friends are all bemoaning his bad luck.

After all, the numbers don't look good for Quincy, with single-family sales having dropped 10 percent so far this year and prices by 13 percent, to a median price of $282,375, The Warren Group reports.

But MWK is confident - he's in it for the long haul.

"I'm not saying my house will be a cash machine in a year from now, but I'll sell it eventually at a profit, I'm pretty confident of that," MWK writes.

OK, it's time to stop hyperventilating over every decline in home prices as a harbinger of doom.

Yes, the long climb down in prices has been a central feature of our nation's now years-long housing market swoon.

But  the double dip in home prices that began in 2010 - and appears to be continuing into this year - is finally igniting long dormant sales.

Take a look at these two numbers.

Bill Kuhlman, CRS, who is the broker/owner of Kuhlman Residential looks at real estate investment and stock investment for the long haul.

Two weeks ago, I compared the total return on investment between three stock indices and median sale prices between January, 2000, and March, 2012. Last week I reported on the performance of the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) versus the rise in the median price of U.S. homes between 1970 and 2010.

The bottom line is that the DJIA closed 13.03 times higher on December 31, 2010, than where it was on January 1, 1970. Over the same period, the median sale price of U.S. homes grew by a factor of 6.83, just a little better than half the growth of the Dow.

What it comes down to is that the rate of return on stocks has, over this particular 40-year period, far outperformed the national median sale price for homes. And you’d have made out like a freakin’ bandit if you had bought into the stock market on December 31, 1979, and sold on December 31, 1999, bookending the two best decades in the history of the stock market.

But, if you had bought an average-performing group of stocks on December 31, 1999 and sold on December 31, 2009, you wouldn’t have been so thrilled, losing over 9 percent of your investment in that decade. Worse, if you’d sold on March 9, 2009, when the Dow was at 6,547.05, you would have suffered a loss of 43 percent of your investment.

Median residential real estate prices in Boston since 1970 have significantly outperformed the national numbers. I wish I could give you the data to back up the statement, but I haven’t been able to find Boston-only data all the way back to 1970. Even with the Case-Shiller Index, which I consider to be the most-accurate measure of the performance of the housing market, I could find local information dating back only as far as 1987. (Again, I invite the research-proficient among you to find some usable data for Boston or Massachusetts home prices stretching back to 1970.)

Here's a little tip about the news business - we just love trend stories.

Better yet, we like to fool ourselves into thinking we are getting out ahead of them as well.

Hence the explosion of news stories and commentary lately on what certainly looks like a resurgent spring market, with evidence, from stats to reports from buyers, sellers, and yes, real estate agents, of a marked increase in activity.

Given we have been mired for years in one of the longest and deepest real estate downturns our nation has ever seen, if the rebound in sales isn't news, then really, what is?

However, instead of evaluating the evidence, some would rather indulge in exotic conspiracy theories about a certain newspaper, Realtors, and some of the writers who cover the industry.

Basically, we are all in cahoots, or so this line of attack goes, plotting to pump up home prices so Realtors can get juicy commissions and the newspaper industry can live to report another day thanks to more ad revenue.

Bring home $100K a year pretty much anywhere else in the country and you'd have your pick of places to live.

But here in Greater Boston, well not so much.

Here are a couple insightful comments from folks out in the market looking at rentals.

A slew of surveys are pointing to rising rents, especially in the Boston area, where apartments have never come cheap. The median rent in the Hub is now $1,834 - the fifth highest in the country - I noted in a recent post.

And even that won't get you far these days, veterans of the local rental market will tell you.

Check out these comments from a couple of apartment dwellers who have clearly seen it all and were not impressed with the $1,834 median rent number. It wasn't too high - rather it was too low!

The reality is, if you want something beyond a worn out 1970s leftover, it costs a lot more than that.

Writes Mggio:

- $1800 rent on a $100k salary is doable but tight. It's almost impossible if you have a car payment/student loans/credit card debt. You won't be able to save for house down payment paying that kind of rent and if you do, you won't be saving for retirement. $100k is a great salary for a single person though and is far above "average".

- If you are married perhaps with a kid and need a two-bedroom, expect to pay at least $2,500 for something decent. Your $100K salary no longer will cut it. You really don't want to life in a 2 bed priced under $2k a month, not even in Allston, Cambridge or Somerville.

Back when everything was going haywire back in 2008 and 2009, the housing bears had a field day.

Every fresh report of home price collapses in Nevada, Florida and other Sunbelt States invariably triggered predictions that the Boston area, with its perpetually inflated real estate values, would soon get its turn.

But here were are, more than three years later, and a Las Vegas-style home price collapse is nowhere in sight.

What happened?

That's the verdict from a Zillow survey of economists and real estate experts, just out this morning.

Home prices nationally will fall another .7 percent in 2012, revised downward from an earlier estimate of a negligible, .2 percent drop, according to Zillow's survey of 104 "economists, real estate experts and market and investment strategists."

Also taking a hit are rosier estimates of a rebound in prices in 2013, with the consensus forecast now calling for a 1.39 percent increase in home prices in 2013, compared to 1.75 percent previously.

The forecasts obviously iron out a range of responses - some individual forecasts were even more alarmist.

Economist Gary Shilling, the dean of the housing bears, expects home prices to fall another 8 percent in 2012.

OK, it's been a while since we've had a good dose of gloom - I've been in withdrawal myself given the relatively happier economic news of late.

So what's behind this new and darker outlook?

Bill Kuhlman, CRS, who is the broker/owner of Kuhlman Residential looks at real estate investment for the very long haul.

In last week's post, I compared the return on investment for real estate between January 1, 2000 through March 1, 2012, versus investments over the same period in three indeces for the stock market: The Dow-Jones Industrial Average, The S&P 500, and NASDAQ.

When I shared the stats that the real estate market went up by nearly double the best-performing stock index (36.7 percent for the median home sale price versus 18.4 percent for the Dow), I was taken to task by various readers for cherry-picking an anomalous time period for stocks. Though it wasn't part of some nefarious plan on my part, it's a fair point.

So this week, I'll go back, decade by decade, from 1970 through 2010, and compare the national median sale price of homes versus the Dow Jones Industrial Average.

A disclaimer or two: First, I was surprised I couldn't easily find a history of U.S. median sale data going back several decades. It took many, many attempts on Bing and Google to get sales history information that, like the Dow Jones, was not adjusted for inflation. Even then, I could only find a chart from which I estimated the values at the beginning of each decade. Any of these estimations might be off slightly. If you have better luck getting the exact figures, I bow to your research superiority.

Though median sale price (same number of sales above and below the median) is the industry standard, I'd prefer to have access to the mean, or the average price for sales, to work with. I think that would be a more accurate measurement of the upward and downward movement in home values. As the upper end of the market tends to deviate far more from the median than the bottom end of the market. The median, IMO, unnecessarily dampens the outcome. But median prices are the only available data I can find for the whole U.S. dating back to 1970, so I'll run with them.

The jury is still out on that one. Still, by the end of this week, we will have some major clues in hand.

The Commerce Department will release numbers of home starts tomorrow, while the National Association of Realtors will report home sales data for February on Wednesday.

Topping it all off, numbers on new home sales will come out on Friday.

All three key indicators are likely to show improvement, according to surveys of top economists by Bloomberg. (Local housing numbers are due out next week.)

Check out the consumer complaint numbers for Massachusetts - home improvement contractors are No. 3.

Shocker!

Seriously though, there were 3,200 complaints about home improvement contractors last year, behind only auto insurance, which generated 8,300 complaints and health insurance, which weighed in with 6,500, the state Office of Consumer Affairs and Business Regulation reports.

One of the more eye-catching complaints to come to light is the case of a Watertown contractor who hired a contractor for $50,000 to shore up the retaining walls around his home.

The contractor got part way through, then vanished, leaving behind a pile of half-finished, shoddily performed work.

And that's clearly just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to complaints about contractors.

That is Zillow's puzzling take on rising rents here in Greater Boston and across the country.

Rents are up in metro markets across the country, even as home prices fall or stagnate.
And it's happening right here in Greater Boston as well, with rents having risen nearly 2 percent over the past year even as the median home price has fallen by 3 percent, Zillow reports.

The median rent for Boston metro is now up to $1,834, the fifth highest in the country. Home prices, by contrast, have fallen to a median price of $302,800, but are still the fifth highest in the country, according to the survey.

In both rents and home prices, we are behind only San Francisco, New York, San Diego and Los Angeles.

OK, fine, but how in the world is this good news for anyone other than real estate developers and landlords?

OK, it's been a very long time since we've had anything remotely resembling good news on a spring real estate market.

Maybe this qualifies: Pending home sales skyrocketed last month, rising 44.2 percent compared to February 2011, the Massachusetts Association of Realtors reports.

It even beat April, 2010, when pending sales soared 32.3 percent as home buyers scrambled to get deals in place before the $8,000 federal tax credit expired.

It is the 10th straight month that pending sales have increased.

"For the first time in generations, the American dream of homeownership is being threatened."

That's straight from the National Association of Realtors latest ad campaign - you know the one in which the cute kid tells grandpa he'd like to own a home just like his someday. Trying not to be a party pooper, Grandpa, softly responds "I hope so" as he gazes worriedly at the moving truck across the street.

Here's the scene, as transcribed by nZone in a recent comment.

Kid: "I'm going to have a house like this when I grow up".
Grandpa: "I hope so" (long pause) I hope so".
NAR: "The dream of homeownership is being threatened".
[another word, it is a good time to buy right now]
NAR: "Realtors, members of National Association of Realtors are here to represent you and protect homeownership".

OK, this ad gets an A for tugging at the heart strings but an F when it comes to basic logic.

"What in the world are they protecting?" nZone asks - and I couldn't agree more.

Let's just think about this for a second.

How you get paid inevitably shapes how you do your job.

One big example can be found in the financial services field. Too many people wind up in the clutches of some some big firm or chain and end up steered into financial products that an adviser is getting paid a commission or fee to push.

If your pay is largely or solely tied to commissions, you are going to hustle like mad to sell, sell, sell.

Of course, my interest here is in homes - and the roiling discontent with the Realtor business model that is obvious to anyone who reads the comment board on this blog.

If we could wave our magic wand and shift agents across the country from commission to salary, client service would certainly go up. Beneficial or not, the number of Realtors would also drop dramatically.

Of course, like any service, you would have to pay for it.

OK, it's not like I have a lot of time these days to ponder how to spend my golden years, if I make it that far.

Like anyone in their 40s here in the Boston area with young children, I am scrambling to make a living.

Still, at least in theory, buying a home is a long-term investment. And it makes no sense to blunder forward without a thought to the end game.

So to put it another way, what is your long-term real estate plan? And does it make sense to retire anywhere the Northeast, especially Massachusetts?

This survey by TopRetirements.com on the "worst states" to retire in has gotten a fair amount of play - it seems a vehicle for selling disgruntled New Englanders on retirement communities in the Sunbelt.

Connecticut is listed as the worst state, followed by Illinois, Rhode Island, Vermont and Massachusetts. Maine is No. 9, just after New York.

Here's a pretty comprehensive piece by Bloomberg on the growing signs of a rebound in the real estate market.

Still, hold the champagne.

A recent Fed report offers a more cautious view of the road ahead for the local housing market in Greater Boston and across New England.

High gas prices and ever longer and more traffic-clogged commutes have sent the average family's transportation costs soaring, a new study finds.

And when commuting costs are weighed alongside monthly mortgage payments and rent payments, more and more families, including here in Greater Boston, are struggling to make ends meet, the Chicago-based Center for Neighborhood Technology finds.

Based on housing costs alone, three quarters of 900 metropolitan and "micropolitan" areas across the country would now be considered affordable to median income families. But the number of "affordable" neighborhoods within reach of the average family shrinks to just 28 percent when gas, car and other transportation costs are factored in.

With a commuter rail and subway system, the Boston area fares better on transportation costs than other metro areas with little or no public transit.

The average family within I-495 shells out $12,394 on commuting and other costs, compared to $14,928 in Birmingham, Ala., and $14,624 in Rochester in Upstate New York, according to the study.

Still, this is no commuter paradise here, either, with the average Boston-area family shelling out 47 percent of its income on transportation and housing. That's just above CNT's 45 percent affordability threshold.

Greetings from sunny Florida, epicenter of the housing market meltdown.

I've spent the last week down in the Sunshine State with Karen and the kids.

My in-laws live outside of Orlando, but managed to survive the housing crash thanks to some prudent decisions.

Mainly they avoided the temptation of moving up to bigger digs when housing prices were soaring down here.

Here's a link to a study that details how both homeowners and renters have taken it on the chin as we slowly climb out of the worst real estate downturn since the great Depression.

Overall housing costs have increased - not decreased - for many families since 2008, when the world economy came close to a replay of 1929, the Center for Housing Policy finds.

For homeowners, incomes fell more than twice as much as housing costs since 2008, according to the study.

Status seeking is bankrupting us. Or to put it more bluntly, snobbery is bankrupting us.

Elitism has been rampant for years in higher education, where parents and their offspring will borrow to the hilt to pay for an elite educational brand.

And it doesn't take too much to realize a roughly similar phenomenon has also been at work in Greater Boston and other pricey housing markets across the country, where the scramble to get into the "right town" with the "right schools" drives many homebuyers.

Yet if you haven't already broken the bank to buy into a W town, there's time to stop the madness with a more practical look at the housing market.

In fact, it might be helpful to take a page from the new realism with which parents have been starting to view bloated college tuition costs. Harvard and other Ivies are great, but the academic rigor is not always what it seems - getting it can be the hardest part.

And for many professions and fields, does anyone really care where you went to college?

A degree is a degree is a degree - it's what you do with it that counts.

More Boston area buyers would be better off taking a similarly hardheaded approach when weighing the pros and cons of various communities.

It is certainly tempting to stretch in a high-priced market like Greater Boston.

But are buyers who stretch and overpay, say $500,000 for a home that was listed at $475,000, essentially selfish, driving up prices and wrecking the market for everyone else?

I'd argue that is a bit of a stretch - a harsh judgment on buyers fighting for a foothold in one of the nation's most difficult housing markets. But clearly not everyone agrees with me on that.

Here's an excellent analysis of stretching - and how it can distort prices - by James in Cambridge.

The housing downturn is slowly but surely on its way out here in Greater Boston.

OK, in some towns it may take years to get back to 2005/2006 prices. Yet in many of the more coveted suburbs real estate values are untouched or even higher than they were before the bubble burst.

Stretching to buy remains commonplace inside the I-495 beltway, putting more prudent buyers, who want to stay within a certain price range, at a distinct disadvantage.

One key piece of evidence is the mismatch between median home prices and family incomes. Yes, we live in one of the wealthiest metro markets in the country, but, even so, housing prices remain at multiples that all but require some amount of stretching.

While the median family income is roughly $100,000 in Middlesex County, the median house is selling for $400,000. In fact, you can ante up a hefty $430,000 and still get out bid in town like Natick, a nice town but hardly a posh suburb.

We hear a lot on the comment board of this blog from buyers who are out there looking, but trying to stay within a certain price point.

Unfortunately, it appears to be a battle between the virtuous few trying to stick to a budget and the more easily swayed majority, seeing no other choice but to pay up to get the house they want.

It's easy to do in Greater Boston, where median incomes, as high as they are, are still out of whack with housing prices.

Just take Middlesex County. One of the wealthiest urban/suburban stretches in the country, it includes places like Cambridge, Newton and Wellesley, where prices may bob about, but never really seem to go down.

Median family income is high - roughly $100,000 in Middlesex County. But home prices, even after years of a down real estate market, are even higher, with the median home price of around $400,000.

For a family on the hunt for a house in the western suburbs - or for that matter across Greater Boston - it's not a question of whether to stretch. Rather, it's how much risk to take on in order to get a house that is not a complete wreck.

My wife went to Smith and I was born in Greenfield. And we'd both move out to Western Massachusetts with our kids in a heartbeat if we could.

Of course, there is just one little problem with that plan - money. Greater Boston is where the jobs are, not Greenfield or even Northampton or Amherst, unless you are an academic.

The jobless rate in Middlesex County, home of the western suburbs, is in the 5 percent range - almost half what it is in parts of Western Massachusetts.

Still, if you can find a way to swing it, you can find some killer home prices and probably a better pace and lifestyle than status obsessed, traffic clogged Greater Boston.

You can easily get a home under $300,000 - and in many cases under $200,000.

West as in Central Massachusetts, that is.

Get out beyond the I-495 belt and home prices drop like a rock.

Check out today's Globe story - you can land a village colonial in Athol for about what it takes to buy a Toyota Camry.

The price differential has always been there, sure. But while the real estate downturn has dented prices in Greater Boston, it has absolutely laid waste to many small towns west of 495.

Athol now has the lowest median sale price in the state, at $78,250. And, as Jenifer McKim notes in her story, many now bank-owned homes can be bought for much less than even that.

Generally, there are several towns in Central Massachusetts now where the median sale price is falling fast towards the $120,000 mark and below, according to The Warren Group, publisher of Banker & Tradesman.

OK, just call this the Valentine's Day edition.

Men and women fall in love for very different reasons, not only with each other, but when it comes to buying a house as well.

Or so says Trulia, which just released a survey of what features men and women go gaga over when looking at a house.

Let's start with the men, where the priorities seem to be grilling, football and sex, in about that order.

OK, I just love it when Realtors invoke the weather, typically when things don't go right.

Like it never snows in New England - duh - or blaming sunny summer for luring buyers to the beach instead of open houses.

But we don't have to consult a meteorologist to know that this has been an exceptionally mild winter.

And in this case, our friendly local real estate agents may be right on in attributing a big increase in pending sales this past January to the spring-like weather.

I am in a generous mood this morning, so I'll even buy the second part of the argument as well. That not only good weather, but an improving economy may be behind the rise.

While sellers across the country are piling on the concessions, not here in the Bay State.

Just 21 percent of sellers offered a sweetener to move their homes, compared to 41 percent nationally, the Massachusetts Association of Realtors reports in its annual survey of buyers and sellers.

Sellers who threw in a few goodies typically chose to fork over money for closing costs and home warranty polices, or offered a credit towards home repairs and remodeling, according to MAR.

Even during tough times, buyers still go gaga over the surface things - fresh paint, hardwood floors, hip appliances.

And the allure of the fresh and new is particularly strong here in Greater Boston, where so many homes are older and in need of fixing up.

However, given how inflated home prices are within I-495, losing your head over a home that has been all dressed up to sell is a luxury most of us can't afford.

If you are fine paying an extra $20,000 for what amounts to a nice paint job, then go ahead, it's your life and your money.

But if you want to break into the Greater Boston market without saddling yourself with backbreaking mortgage payments, you have force yourself to see beyond hideous wallpaper, scuffed floors, dingy bathrooms and battered doors.

Certainly seems that way to me after reading the comments on one of my recent posts.

Having been in this situation myself, I took to heart Brendan's story about his so far fruitless house hunt in the western suburbs.

Brendan and his wife, Emily, want to say goodbye to their urban apartment and find a four bedroom, 2000-square-foot home in reasonable condition.

They'd like to start a family and are looking to spend in the $400,000 to $500,000 range.

Yet the one home he liked, in Natick, he wound up outbid on. Since then, it has been a dreary march through a series of oddly configured, overpriced fixer uppers.

Sounds all fairly typical - to me it was pretty clear that it was just another buyer grappling
with the often tough reality that you can spend a lot on a house inside the I-495 beltway and not have much to show for it.

But Brendan's story, unfortunately, and, to me, inexplicably, struck a very different chord among some of those who follow and comment on this blog.

Extra space comes at as premium here in Greater Boston, a market dominated by older, smaller homes.

The vast majority of homes inside the I-495 beltway were built before the 1970s, when families were bigger and home sizes were typically smaller.

Homes built in the first few decades after World War II are likely to fall in the 2,000-square- feet-and-below range - I am thinking of all those vast tracts of 1950s capes and ranches.

My Natick village colonial is not even 1,800 square feet - and that's after an addition and renovation.

Yet maybe the problem isn't the size of the housing that's out there, but rather our attitude towards it. Even in a modestly-sized house, most of us can point to space we don't use and if push comes to shove, would be hard to justify, at least on a utilitarian basis.

Sorry, but the great home price collapse is looking about as likely right now as a visit from the Great Pumpkin.

It's hard not to come to that conclusion even with the latest Case-Shiller report.

The picture nationally is rockier than what analysts had predicted. Economists surveyed by Bloomberg had predicted a 3.3 percent drop in home prices nationally for November in the latest Case-Shiller report.

We wound up with a 3.7 percent drop and a 1.6 percent drop in Boston metro prices.

That puts housing values back at spring 2003 levels, or about an 18 percent decline locally, compared to as much as 30 percent nationally.

However, the numbers mask the unfortunate reality home buyers sooner or later find out about the Greater Boston market. The fact is, there really are no bargains out there, just homes, often in need of work, that are somewhat less inflated in price than they were five years ago.

For a real estate rebound to take hold, prices don't have to soar. They simply have to get off what has been a relentlessly downward track.

There are signs that this is already happening in Greater Boston, with some towns having actually seen prices rise over the past year while others saw modest declines.

Sales are now starting to rise again, though it's a long climb up from anemic levels not seen since the early 1990s.

Crucially, more buyers may also encourage more sellers to take a chance - right now, as my Monday post noted, the pickings are pretty slim for house hunters right now.

It's hard for the market to gain traction when there is not much to look at.

Brendan and his wife, Emily, thought finding a four bedroom home in the suburbs would be a cinch.

After all, we are in the midst of a seemingly never ending real estate downturn, right?

Well yes and no.

Home sales have been skidding along at record low levels not seen since the early 1990s, though activity has begun to pick up over the past few months.

But prices in more than a few suburbs within have held fairly steady or have gone up over the past year. (I quote Brendan and look at prices in the western suburbs in this Globe West piece that ran yesterday.)

Back to Brendan and his wife, who found themselves outbid for a 1950s colonial in need of work last spring. The Lois Street home, on the market for $430,000, wound up fetching $450,000 after a short but furious bidding war.

Attorney Richard D. Vetstein didn't ask me what I thought of the market. I guess he knows better! He and his partner did an informal survey of some of his associates on the topic of what they expect in 2012.

Attorney Vetstein writes:
My law partner and I did our own unscientific survey on the 2012 real estate market by contacting the real estate agents and loan officers with whom we do business. Here are some snippets of what they think 2012 will bring:

"I expect the 2012 real estate market in the greater Boston area to be stable. Overall, buyers will continue to have the upper hand but I don?t think we are going to see any precipitous drop in either sales prices or the number of sales. If interest rates remain low it continues to be a good time to get into the market knowing that you are getting in somewhere close to the bottom." -Realtor (tm), Cambridge

"I am optimistic that interest rates will remain low at least until the presidential elections. The uncertainty that has constrained spending and lending will keep things from taking off until there is a clearer picture of what policies will be in place (intervention and regulation vs. deregulation and free markets)." -Loan Officer, Boston, Brookline and Route 128 suburbs

"I see a slow start to the Spring, but a steady stream of inventory equal to purchasers. The best place to be is in a move-up, as buyers will find a greater gain on their more expensive home in spite of possibly losing a bit on the sale side. It seems that there are more foreclosures on the horizon with stable amounts of short sales, another way for a buyers to make immediate gains. Buyers will still dictate values, relative to condition and inventory." -Realtor (tm), Framingham

Here's the latest idea for bailing out the troubled housing market, straight from the Left Coast.

James Wilcox, an economist at the University of California, Berkeley, wants the federal government to guarantee homeowners they won't lose money if they buy a home.

If prices fall after you buy that Medford two-family or Plymouth ranch, the government would send you a check based on the decline. If prices fall far enough, you could get your whole down payment back.

Such a guarantee, in turn, would convince wary buyers, now sitting on the sidelines as prices continue to fall, to instead take the plunge and sign for a home, Wilcox writes in the Times today.

Sounds like a classic liberal free lunch, right? Well, not quite.

Good old 1990. The Massachusetts Miracle had just gone bust and banks across New England were tottering under crazy office development and condo loans.

Well you have to go back that far to find a year when home sales were as low as they were in 2011, real estate publisher and data firm The Warren Group reports this morning.

Sales of single-family homes dropped 6 percent in 2011 compared to 2010, to a grand total of 38,994. That's just as few thousand above 1990's anemic total of 35,819 sales.

Worse, the year ended with a thud, with December sales having fallen 5 percent compared to December, 2010.

But at the risk of sounding like a born-again housing market bull, a closer look at the numbers points to some reason to hope that we'll see a modest sales rebound in 2012.

Roughly three-quarters of homeowners polled across the country say they are satisfied with owning, reports HomeGain in its latest survey.

But the reasons have little to do with prices, which have been down, but rather the traditional reasons often cited as benefits of home ownership. These include having control over the home and what types of upgrades are made, as well as pride of ownership.

Meanwhile, 28 percent are not so thrilled with home ownership, with two-thirds of these unhappy campers disgruntled over the direction of real estate prices.

Instead of the silent majority here, we have the happy majority.

When I began to write about the winter market, I drew a comment from my friend and ally, Bill Wendel. He and I met in 1992, when we had allied interest in the development of buyer agency, MABA and NAEBA. During December, Bill began writing about the winter market, including expired and canceled high-end listings.

Timing the market is not as simple as just showing up at the low-demand time of the year. There is leg-work involved in finding the properties that have not sold because they are over-priced or otherwise mis-marketed. Like jj24, successful buyers watch long-standing listings until the time is right to make a good deal on it.

Bill writes:
This year, we realized that focusing on seller-initiated mega price reductions caused us to miss some significant savings, like price concessions negotiated by exclusive buyer agents and price reductions that effectively occur when listings expire or are canceled. Is "timing the market" really be the most effective way to get a price reduction on a luxury home in Boston or elsewhere in MA? That's a possibility, based on the success of past clients and our ongoing analysis of expired & canceled listings across Massachusetts during the final weeks of 2011.

During 20 day period between St. Nick's Day and Christmas (12/6-25/11), approximately 234 residential MLS listings priced over $850,000 expired or were canceled. As noted in our previous blog posts in this series Sellers with high end homes seemed less likely to reduce their prices than less expensive listings which often expired even though they were priced well below their assessed value.

Home ownership has been very good to Mike, thank you very much.

We are bombarded with stories these days about underwater homeowners and the never ending travails of the housing market.

You would think everyone was on the edge of foreclosure. Yet we are still talking about a small minority of market, even with the record number of bank repossessions.

Frankly, for the majority of homeowners, life goes on as it did before the big real estate bust. And for some, who were smart enough to buy within their means in a community with relatively stable pricing, real estate has turned out to be a pretty darned good investment as well.

Just ask "Mike," whose name I've changed to protect him from the retribution of grumpy housing market bears.

OK gang, I am working on story for the Globe West on prices in the western suburbs. If you are looking at buying or have recently bought, email me at sbvanvoorhis@hotmail.com.

For that matter, I am also interested what buyers have to say, whether they are looking in the western suburbs or not, for future posts on this blog. So if you have a story to tell, regardless of where you are looking, let me know as well.

Or so says rental market tracker HotPads, which puts Boston just behind New York when it comes to high rents.

The average listing price for a two bedroom in Boston and the western suburbs is just under $2,000 a month, according to HotPads. The New York metro market weighs in around $2,500 a month.

And we are just getting started here, with rising demand and an increasingly tight market fueling predictions of double digit increases for 2012.

It's a trend that not only has renters on edge, but some landlords as well.

In fact, one of the Boston area's most prolific apartment developers is already warning of a potential backlash.

At least when it comes to the battered housing market, consumer sentiment may have finally hit bottom.

Americans see housing prices finally stabilizing in 2012, predicting, on average, a modest .8 bump up in real estate values, according to Fannie Mae's latest monthly survey of the national housing market.

Some of it is clearly tied to the economy, with more people now saying their personal financial situation will be better over the next year than those predicting no improvement at all.

Roughly 71 percent said it is a good time to buy a home, up three points from Fannie Mae's November survey. However, just 11 percent believe it is a good time to sell.

Why buy a condo now when you might finally be able to afford a single family home here in Greater Boston?

I recently posed that question and got quite a response from condo buyers.

Some argued I am missing the intrinsic good things that come with condo ownership.

Well having just shoveled my driveway here out in Natick, this is one of those days when I wish I was a condo owner too.

If you want to own a house, that's great, but you had better either learn how to be handyman/handywoman or hire one.

Here's what CentDonation wrote:

I bought a townhouse condo even though I could have afforded a single family home. Why? Lawn care and snow plowing. If I had a single family home my yard would have been the one with waist high weeds, and my sidewalk would have been the impassable one. Also, I'm not a big hanging out outside person, so the lack of a private yard isn't as big a deal for me.

That's the advice of rental market tracker RentJuice.

Only about 20 percent of apartment listings in the Boston area - defined as Boston and the inner ring of suburbs - are available for immediate occupancy in January, RentJuice reports.

But that number soars to 63 percent when it comes to apartments available for rent in April.

Still, if you are in a jam and need to move now, consider Everett, Chelsea or Dorchester, or for that matter Braintree and West Roxbury, where 60 percent of the listings are available now.

If you are asking yourself this question, you apparently are not alone.

Pending condo sales plunged 20 percent in 2011, the Massachusetts Association of Realtors reports.

That's compared to a much smaller slip of just under 2 percent for pending sales of single-family homes for the year.

Condos emerged as Greater Boston's answer to the starter home during the bubble years - as a way to get into the real estate market for less than $300,000.

But as home prices in middle class and blue collar towns have slipped, some buyers who would have been forced to settle in years past for a condo have found new options in the single-family home market.

Home prices may be finally stabilizing, if not headed back up, says Clear Capital in new report.

OK, granted we are talking about pretty minimal gains overall - a projected 1.4 percent bump up for Greater Boston in 2012 compared to an incremental .1 percent increase in 2011.

But not all towns are created equal - the most expensive suburbs may just start to see prices take off again in 2012, while more middle-of-the-road towns find stability.

That's what Ben Bernanke appears to be suggesting.

The Federal Reserve recently fired off a white paper to Congress chock full of ideas for stabilizing the housing market, Bloomberg reports.

While job growth has picked up, the housing market is still headed in the opposite direction, threatening the economy as a whole, the Fed contends.

More than $7 trillion in housing equity has vanished - more than half of what was on the books in 2006 before the housing bubble burst. Overall, prices have fallen 33 percent since then, the Fed notes in its report.

Fortunately, no one is talking about home buyer tax credits anymore - one of the most disastrous economic gimmicks of modern times.

Now there's a long commute!

OK, just kidding about the commute, but not the move. Greyphysics, who some will surely recognize from the comments section of this blog, recently moved to Ontario after she and her husband came to the painful conclusion that Boston area real estate prices were not for them.

The couple, who work in the sciences, traded in their Boston area apartment for one near Toronto that, for roughly the same cost, is bigger, better laid out and includes everything.

Here's greyphysics.

So far it is a huge improvement. Our rent is about the same but includes heat, hot water, electricity and a garage parking space. No more shoveling or running out to move the car for street cleaning. The apartment is updated and perfect for starting a family, unlike most of the apartments back home. We will probably buy something someday, but there's no rush and no need for it to be in Boston.

It wasn't an easy conclusion to come to, though.

Trulia chief economist Jed Kolko is predicting big things this year for "smart cities."

They are hot, hot, hot, according to Kolko, with thriving high-tech and knowledge sectors priming the economic pump and ready to chase away the housing market blues in these lucky markets.

And our western suburbs, defined generously as the broad sweep from Cambridge to Framingham, are high on his list. As "honorable mentions," he throws in the northern suburbs, and, less clearly, Worcester.

So argues one of the most respected economics blogs around.

Once inflation is accounted for, the real estate downturn has succeeded in wiping out all the price gains of the 2000s, Calculated Risk contends.

Of course, all real estate is local - there are a few tony suburbs and hot urban neighborhoods in Greater Boston that have seen prices go up, not down, during the downturn.

But that's not been the reality of much of the rest of the country - or for most of the middle of the road towns and neighborhoods around here, for that matter.

I seem to be in a minority in my outrage over the National Association of Realtors numbers mess.

As noted in yesterday's post, NAR recently owned up to overstating home sales by more than 14 percent since the real estate downturn kicked into high gear in 2007.

Basically, the trade organization reported nearly 3 million home sales from 2007 through 2010 that simply never happened.

More seriously, while owning up to the mistake, NAR has stopped short of pledging to thoroughly revamp what appears to be a flawed methodology.

That means we may very well be in for similar surprises in the future.

But reaction in the comments section was muted. Basically, no one believes NAR's numbers in the first place, so what's the big deal?

Let's not beat around the bush. The honors go to the massive screw up by the National Association of Realtors, which has been dramatically overstating the number of homes sold for years now.

In a recent release, NAR states that its estimates of homes sold across the country were off by more than 14 percent between 2007 and 2010. Nearly 3 million fewer homes were sold over the past three years, when the bottom fell out of the real estate market.

It's clear now the housing downturn has been even worse than we all assumed.

Still, it's hard not to get a kick at how the trade group reported this piece of embarrassing news.

The revision is tucked into a cheery press release headlined, "Existing-Home Sales Continue to Climb in November."

I will get the ball rolling with a few of my own. Feel free to let me have it and offer a few of your own.

I will feature some of the more insightful commentaries in a post next week as 2012 kicks into gear.

Kudos to James in Cambridge for his great analysis of the bleak outlook confronting homeowners with dreams of moving up to bigger spreads.

Basically, given the likelihood at best of anemic price increases over the next five years, hoping to cash in on your current home in order to pay for the next one could be a pipe dream.

"If you want to "move up the housing ladder," you're going to have to earn more money. Your house won't do it for you," James notes.

Great point. The other option, I'd add, is playing the old location game, taking on a longer commute for a larger house. Given ever more clogged roadways and the decrepit state of our public transportation system, that's an option you should think long and hard about before moving out to East Nowhereville.

Boston Mayor Thomas M. Menino wants to lure young entrepreneurs to the city's emerging waterfront district, currently home to the ICA, the convention center and a scattering of upscale apartment and office high-rises.

So city officials, working with developers, want to build "micro-units" as small as 300-to-375-square-feet as bait to lure young tech talent from Cambridge and beyond.

But there is one big, macro-sized problem to the micro-unit idea, and it's the rent, set at $1,500 a month.

It's tough to buy a home around here, even if you have one or two decent incomes to work with.

And the hyped up competition to snag a home, any home, is far from the norm.

That's a crucial question for anyone hoping to eventually move up the housing ladder.

It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that moving up in this market is going to be pretty tough, especially if you bought your home during the bubble years.

But what will the market look like five years from now in 2016?

Zillow.com put that question to a panel of more than 100 economists from across the country and came back with some pretty interesting answers.

Interest rates keep flirting with new record lows.

The rate on a traditional, 30-year mortgage fell to a record 4.19 percent last week, reports Bankrate.com, which I occasionally write for. And at 3.42 percent, the rate on a 15-year fixed-rate mortgage tied a record low.

That's good news for home buyers, who can save hundreds on their monthly mortgage payments.

But too often, this fact becomes part of a hackneyed sales pitch - better buy now before rates start rising again.

Well don't fall for it.

Let's face it, the real estate downturn is not all that bad.

After all, it is helping at least keep prices in check here in overinflated Greater Boston.,

But as potential buyers decide to stay put and make do with what they have, is this also spurring some badly needed creativity in home design?

So says Connecticut-based architect and author Duo Dickinson, in this piece just out in U.S. News & World Report on home design. I guess still do more than just the college rankings.

That's the latest prediction from Freddie Mac chief economist Frank Nothaft.

He see's home prices dropping another 1 percent across the country in 2012, followed by a 2 percent jump in 2013.

Mortgage rates will stay low through at least the middle of next year, Nothaft contends.

OK, Realtors are as popular right now as reporters, elected officials and bankers. In post-crash America, scapegoats abound.

But some of the criticism seems increasingly over the top, especially when it comes to Realtors, who are a favorite target of a few regulars in the comments section of this blog.

I guess I am having a hard time fathoming the intense anger held by a few that real estate agents actually make their living by selling homes, earning a commission when they are successful.

Sounds just like the way many people in a capitalist economy make their living, providing an essential and honorable service, whether selling homes or hospital products or widgets.

Here's a lesson for anyone tempted to get greedy with the listing price of their home.

Building in a big premium, far from guaranteeing a nice gain at the end of the day, instead may be a ticket to multiple price reductions. And when you do sell, you could wind up parting with your house at a sizable discount.

Certainly that's what many frustrated sellers and their agents are discovering as homes come on the market at lofty prices, only to die a death of a thousand price cuts.

And as it turns out, there is academic research out there to back up this up as well.

Consider a little known - in consumer circles anyway - study from 2002.

Barney Frank is retiring and as some see it, he is one of the big culprits behind the housing market crash.

Yes, Barney was as clueless as Greenspan during the bubble years, as were many other national leaders. But Wall Street depravity and the gutting of decades of financial industry regulations were arguably far more meaningful factors behind the collapse.

Love him or hate him, Barney is both brilliant and ready to tell it how it is. My favorite was his smack down of the Tea Party type who, at a forum on Obama's health care plan, asked Frank, "Why are you supporting this Nazi policy."

Said Frank: "Trying to have a conversation with you would be like arguing with a dining room table."

When push came to shove in the fall of 2008, Frank put himself squarely on the right side of history, helping push through $789 billion-plus bailout that saved both the banks and the auto industry from collapsing.

If you think the housing market in trouble, then what it would be like now without an auto industry and with most of our major banks in cinders?

Some fear that demanding 20 percent down would be a major shock to a housing market still struggling to get up off its knees.

It is certainly the big question amid a raging debate in Washington on whether to return to the 20 percent down rule, the long-time gold standard in real estate that was thrown to the winds during the bubble years.

Yet a new survey of what home buyers are putting down reveals we are already more than halfway there.

Amid the now years-long housing downturn, the down payment has morphed from a small or token entry feet to a substantial, upfront payment.

Nationally, banks and other lenders across the country are now asking for, on average, 12.29 percent down, according to a new report out by LendingTree.com.

Here in Massachusetts, the average is a shade below 13 percent, making us No. 10 in the country for states with the highest down payments.

Pending sales are up - but so are cancellations

There has been a modest bump in sales activity -  in Massachusetts and across the country - as we head into December.

Pending home sales posted a 5.2 percent, year-over-year increase in November, the Massachusetts Association of Realtors reports. There were initial sales contracts inked on 3,580 homes last month.

That mirrors the 10.4 percent jump in pending sales across the country the National Association of Realtors recently crowed about.(Though, to be clear, that was a month-over-month increase, as in October over September, raising some basic seasonal issues with those numbers.)

Yet how many of these deals will make it to the closing table?

Some sellers here in Greater Boston contend they are being abused by pushy buyers.

My post yesterday - My home is worth more than that! - got some pointed responses from sellers.

One commenter in particular, Temporarily, offered up a compelling defense of sellers who have done everything right, only to wind up getting walked all over by buyers who want it all, and then some.

Temporarily bought for $625,000 in 2004 and then put another $80,000 into various renovations. The bathrooms were gutted, new windows put in, not to mention a new patio and some nice landscaping work as well.

Even so, Temporarily listed at $629,000 and would have bargained down to $615,000.

Instead, Temporarily got just one offer - for $599,000.

OK, the market may be down, but I don't care, because my home is different. It's so special and I am entitled to a nice premium, thank you very much. And don't you dare offer a penny less than the listed price.

This continues to be a common refrain among homeowners, and no more so than here in Greater Boston, land of perpetually-inflated home prices.

Despite the bursting of the real estate bubble and a near Depression, many still believe their homes are undervalued, HomeGain finds in its latest quarterly market survey.

Here's a particularly telling stat. More than three quarters of homeowners nationally - 76 percent - believe their homes are worth more than the listing price urged by their real estate agent.

Yes, the wretched economy is seeing more recent college grads than ever return home.

Check out Rona's great blog on this trend - one survey found that 85 percent of the Class of 2011 planned to move back home.

But is there more than just pure economics behind this shift? Has the prospect of camping out with mom and dad simply lost its stigma and now presents a warm and cozy alternative?

Earlier generations of college students struggled mightily to avoid moving back with their parents. I know, having entered the labor force back in 1991, when New England was slammed with one of the worst downturns it had ever seen.

The idea of returning home and camping out in the basement was a fate worse than death. To me, it seemed nothing less than a gut-wrenching admission of defeat - that my hard work in college and my dreams of launching a career had been all for naught.

Yes, personality could be the deciding factor in whether you are better off renting long-term or buying.

That's my take on new research, soon to be published in Real Estate Economics, by Eli Beracha of East Carolina University and Ken H. Johnson of Florida International University.

The title says it all: "Lessons from Over 30 Years of Buy versus Rent Decisions: Is the American Dream Always Wise?"

And the short answer, after getting a chance to read through the entire paper the other day, is that renting can indeed trump buying, at least on a purely financial basis. But it's also clear that to make renting a successful financial strategy for you, you need to have the right mix of personality and personal circumstance as well.

If you are looking at buying a home right now, whether you realize it or not, you are a dying breed.

Panicked over rising prices, first timers helped drives sales during the housing bubble, eager to grab a home, any home, while they still could.

First-time buyers made a short-lived comeback in late 2009 and early 2010 when Uncle Sam started doling out $8,000 a pop to anyone buying a house for the first time.

But we all know what happened after that. The tax credit money stopped flowing in April 2010 and first-time buyers went into hiding again, triggering the double dip in home prices we are now mired in.

Here's a pretty interesting take on some of the barriers that are keeping first-time buyers out of the market. These range from a high unemployment rate for younger workers, to skittish banks seeking downpayments that now average 22 percent.

Who is better off financially now, renters or buyers?

Homeowners long held an edge in this perennial argument.

After all, prices just kept on rising year after year. Throw in that nice federal tax break and why rent?

But that may be changing, and fast. Price increases, unless you live in a boutique town or neighborhood in high demand, have become a thing of the past.

And suddenly homeownership is no longer the savings/investment vehicle it once was. For the unwise or unlucky, it's now clear it can be one way ticket to foreclosure and financial distress.

Now researchers in academia are starting to come up with some hard numbers that could help those on the fence, wavering between buying and renting, make better decisions.

Home sales are up and prices are down across Massachusetts, new reports out today show.

Sales rose more than 5 percent in October, to 3,189, while prices fell 7 percent, to a median price of $270,000, from October, 2010, reports The Warren Group, publisher of Banker & Tradesman. Meanwhile, the Massachusetts Association of Realtors released similiar stats showing  a 2.7 percent bump up in sales and a 5 percent drop in prices.

Well it's an important question to ask before you decide to liven up your holiday festivities with a few open houses.

In fact, there a lively debate out there in Realtor Land as to whether you should either keep your home on the market between Thanksgiving and January or even put it on as a new listing.

OK, there appear to be more than a few agents out there ready to try and sell your house between now and New Year's Day.

After all, times are tough in real estate right now and they need all the listings they can get.

Malls and retailers are pulling out all the stops to get shoppers in their stores come Friday morning.

And, as savvy salespeople, they know that the lure of good stuff cheap is enough to draw a crowd in the chilly early morning hours after Thanksgiving.

Now it would be going too far to say that real estate agents are taking weekend after Thanksgiving off.

I did find listings for a couple hundred open houses this weekend scattered across Eastern Massachusetts.

But I saw only a few efforts, all from past years, to try and make any connection with Black Friday - such as "Black Friday open house."

Too bad given all the shoppers who will be out on the roads come Friday.

If you are holding off on having children, you are certainly not alone in during these hard times.

The number of births across the country has fallen to the lowest levels in more than a decade, Bloomberg reports.

It follows a now well worn pattern in which couples put plans for children on hold during tough times, with the most dramatic example being the Great Depression, when birth rates fell 20 percent.

By contrast, Massachusetts has seen a decline of about 4 percent, in line with the national average.

So what does this have to do with the housing market? Well a lot.

Yes, families with children are just one segment of the housing market. That said, an expanding family can often be found behind many a house hunt, whether it's a couple making a jump from an apartment to a starter home or a small but growing family looking for something bigger.

OK, so where are local buyers looking as they hunt for a home they can afford?

I had Trulia send me a couple lists. The first is the top ten markets local buyers in Greater Boston are looking at, as measured by queries on the search engine.

The western suburbs - Cambridge, Newton, Framingham - are the top market in terms of searches. Buyers, even here in pricey Greater Boston, are still inclined to look in their back yards.

But after that it gets interesting, with lower cost markets like Worcester, Portland, Providence and Southern New Hampshire rounding dominating the top ten.

Check out this new report by Trulia. It puts Boston - and Washington, D.C. as well - at the bottom of the heap in terms of interest by potential home buyers from other parts of the country.

Trulia takes a snapshot of online house hunting habits and comes away with some interesting findings. In particular, the online real estate site looks at the markets potential buyers, and for that matter renters, are searching from, and then matches it up with the metro areas they are looking at.

Basically, Boston comes in No. 3 in the top 10 markets where there are lots of people looking elsewhere for new homes and apartments, but not a lot of folks looking in.

Yes, we are seeing a mini boom in new rental construction. Developers with plans for five new apartment high-rises are set to get a green light from the Boston Redevelopment Authority tonight, the Globe reports.

That should add another 1,400 units to the thousands already in construction or in the pipeline, both in Boston and the suburbs.

But don't get your hopes up that this flood of new supply will magically bring down now soaring rents. It's just not going to happen.

Downtown apartment towers are for the young and upscale and the older and wealthy - these are hardly bastions of middle and working class family housing. And while many of the new suburban rental developments may not pack the height of the urban counterparts, but they are pitched at a decidedly upscale market.

Nothing wrong with that, but there's not going to be much trickle down here when it comes to lowering rents for the rest of the market. Sure, there will be more luxury units for well off empty nesters to pick from, but it's hard to see that having any impact on apartment rents in Hyde Park or Dorchester.

OK, Gerri Willis certainly doesn't mince words.

I chatted with the Fox Business Network anchor in advance of a "housing summit" she hosted on her nightly consumer and personal finance show, The Willis Report.

Willis can hold forth with the best of them on the latest housing market woes and how the sector's implosion is dragging the whole economy down.

But when it comes to doling out the individual advice, Willis, whose specialty is personal finance, is very much a housing bull.

Basically, rates are at historic lows and prices are down roughly 30 percent. If you want to buy a house, this is the time to do it. Look carefully, though, at the health of your local economy - in the end jobs and real estate are closely intertwined, she argues.

OK, to put it another way, is the media to blame for keeping buyers on the sideline?

That's what the chief economist of the National Association of Home Builders appeared to be getting at during a panel discussion Friday evening on Fox Business Network.

"Basically, buyers are being misled by these scare tactics of big drops in individual (markets)," argued the NAHB's David Crowe in a "housing summit" led by anchor Gerri Willis.

Instead, buyers should be focused on the market in their town or neighborhood, he said.

Maybe, given the latest grim tidings on the nation's battered housing market.

The Fiserv Case-Shiller Indexes are now projecting another 3.6 percent drop in home prices across the country through next June.

Ouch!

And the Bay State is not likely to escape the undertow, with various submarkets expected to see declines of anywhere from 2.8 to 4.5 percent, according to the Wisconsin-based housing market tracker.

He certainly stirred the pot. Commenting on my post yesterday on how the Boston area remains one of the most expensive in the country to buy in, VincenteP argued a family needs to make $250,000 to buy a house and live a typical middle class lifestyle here.

In Boston a family needs to make $250K just to have a "middle class" experience that $70K would buy in most other parts of the country. Oh the culture, right. Except that companies have started to realize this as well and have moved their jobs elsewhere. No jobs, housing prices will come down.

Not surprisingly, that $250,000 number got some people pretty worked up.

Here's Lance:

Anybody who can't make $250K/yr work in Boston is either spoiled, financially clueless, or has an inveterate gambling/drug habit.

While I think $250,000 is too high, it gets to a key point. It takes more to live a middle class life - complete with a single-family home large enough for a kid or two - than in most other parts of the country. And to do so, you need to earn considerably more than you would than, say, in North Dakota or Upstate New York.

Only New York and California's top three metro markets are more expensive to buy a house in, Zillow finds in its latest quarterly report.

Of the nation's 25 top metro markets, the Boston area comes in at No. 5, with a median home value of $319,000.

While San Francisco remains king, at $467,400, we are not that far behind New York ($348,000), San Diego ($344,000), and Los Angeles ($387,000).

And we are still near the top despite a nearly 20 percent decline across the Boston area in median prices since the market peaked here in 2005.

The latest homes sales numbers are out and they look tough.

Pending home sales - contracts signed but not closed yet - fell 2 percent in October over September across the state, the Massachusetts Association of Realtors reports.

Instead of hitting open houses and putting houses under agreement as the fall market kicked in, home buyers instead appear to be taking a step back.

Nationally, pending sales fell 4.6 percent in September from August, the National Association of Realtors reports.

OK, no one is going to hunt for a house on the basis of whether the area is prone to power outages.

Still, as we endure the second week-long power outage in three months, it might be an issue at least considering.

And, oddly enough, if you are so inclined, there is a way to figure this out.

As you look at a community's schools and other services, also check out whether the town runs its own electric utility or relies on one of the big power companies, NStar and National Grid.

If it does, there's a good bet that your lights will be coming on much faster than those of your friends in the town next door serviced by one the big utilities.

Here's a scary number. As many as 42 percent of homeowners across the country think prices typically rise about 7 percent a year, according to a new survey by Zillow.

Of course, the real number is much lower, on average 2-5 percent a year. And of course, that's an historic average with the ups and downs of the market smoothed out.

The last time I checked - just this morning actually - we are still locked in a historic downturn that has seen home values fall as much as 30 percent or more in some markets.

She's been at it for ten months now, but Dionysia can't find a buyer for her renovated Victorian.

In fact, she's hasn't even gotten an offer on her house, located in the downtown of a "small MetroWest city," with just a modest pickup in traffic through the house this fall after a completely dead summer.

Dionysia wonders where she has gone wrong.

After all, she's priced her house at just $6,000 above what she paid for it eight years ago. And that's despite having pumped more than $100,000 into everything from a new roof.

Here's what she had to say in a comment on my recent blog on sellers who get insulted by low-ball bidders.

After a modest rebound in 2010, new home construction is plunging again across the Boston area.

The number of building permits issued by local cities and towns is set to sink below 4,500 in 2011, the worst showing in more than two decades and apparently eclipsing even 2009, according to a new report out by the Boston Foundation.

Not that 2010 was any great shakes. While an improvement over the Great Recession year of 2009, the number of homes built, even amidst the home buyer tax credit frenzy, was just half of what it was in 2005.

And guess what? Not even 2005 was all that great - even during the bubble years the number of new homes built across Greater Boston had fallen to just a  fraction what was put up during the 1980s.

Now of course housing construction does drop during hard times, but our declines are part of a longer, systemic problem that now spans decades.

Underwater homeowners would get a lifeline of sorts under the Obama Administration's latest housing market rescue plan.

While interest rates have fallen to unbelievable lows, many homeowners can't refinance. After years of falling prices, they simply owe more on their mortgages than their homes are worth.

But underwater homeowners, as long as they have made all their mortgage payments on time in the past six months and meet a few other basic criteria, such as being gainfully employed, would be eligible for a new refinance product just rolled out by the Obama Administration.

The savings could prove substantial, with $3,000 in savings each year on a $200,000 mortgage that is refinanced from 6 percent down to 4.5 percent, according to this explanatory piece put out by the Associated Press.

Given higher home prices here in Greater Boston, that could amount to $6,000 in savings a year for a homeowner with a $400,000 mortgage.

An estimated 230,000 homeowners across Massachusetts are underwater on their mortgages, owing an average of $120,000 more than what their properties are actually worth now, CoreLogic reports. That's more than 15 percent of everyone who owns a home in the state.

It's a breathtaking gap, created in part by our crazy home prices. Nationally, underwater borrowers owe on average $65,000 more on their homes than they are currently worth.

All that said, there are a couple of red flags here.

The Bay State may still be perceived as a liberal stronghold, but the president does not appear to be getting a lot of love from local real estate agents.

A startling 78 percent of Massachusetts real estate agents polled by HomeGain "strongly disapprove" of the Obama's performance.

The survey, taken in the third quarter amid a pileup of bad housing market news and the fallout from a tough spring market, is a big jump from the roughly 50 percent who gave the president failing grades at the start of the year.

It is further reflection of the deep quagmire the housing market has bogged down in. And while it would be unfair to blame the president for creating the housing mess we are in, he has arguably taken a bad situation and made it worse.

I'll lift here from my weekly Banker & Tradesman column, which came out today, which delves into the HomeGain poll numbers.

Sorry, but if you get offended because a buyer tries to strike a hard bargain, please don't come crying to me.

You may not like the offer, but to take it as a personal affront?

We are living in 2011, not 1811.

Frankly, here's where I think some sellers desperately need a reality check.

Everyone haggles over everything these days. But some sellers apparently still get miffed over what they perceive as low ball offers.

That's what our friend "Frank," who surfaces from time to time to share his experiences, is finding out as he continues to look for a deal in suburban Boston.

Spying a promising $470,000 colonial north of Boston, Frank offered $425,000.

While that might sound low, it is roughly 10 percent below the asking price and above the assessed value, Frank notes.

Besides, the owners had already cut the price twice before.

But instead of countering, the owners are apparently opting to cut the price again, to $465,000.

Buyers should be cashing in right now, scooping up homes at bargain prices, but they aren't.

Instead, many sellers are refusing play, either pulling their homes off the market or opting not to sell in the first place.

A growing problem locally - I recently blogged about it here - the decline in decent inventory is also starting to become a major issue in other metro markets across the country.

The number of homes on the market has dropped by 20 percent across the country through the end of September, according to a new report by Realtor.com.

Is Mark Zandi ahead of the curve or just full of it?

A few years ago, it was the outspoken bears like Nouriel Roubini who faced raised eyebrows over their predictions of a global housing and economic meltdown.

Now Mark Zandi, Moody's Analytics chief economist, is stirring controversy with his relatively upbeat forecasts for the housing market, even as fears of another recession intensify.

The nation's No. 1 talking head economist, Zandi offered up his latest pep talk to a national gathering of mortgage bankers in Chicago earlier this week.

And it was a message that was likely a crowd pleaser for his audience, desperate for any scrap of good news.

Let;s go right to the Dow Jones article.

For-sale signs are a little harder to spot this fall.

The number of homes for sale is dropping, both across the country and here in Massachusetts.

And while the drop in "inventory," as it's called in the business, might be good news in a grossly overbuilt market like Las Vegas, it is definitely bad news here, especially in still pricey Greater Boston.

Here are two numbers to munch on from a piece in this week's Banker & Tradesman.

The number of homes on the market was down 5.3 percent in August compared to a year earlier. July saw a 1.7 percent year-over-year drop in inventory.

Meanwhile, sales activity, while still anemic, has begun to pick up after hitting rock bottom last summer with the expiration of the home buyer tax credit, may it rest in peace. Sales rose 15.8 percent in August compared to August 2010, the paper reports, citing figures from real estate data firm, The Warren Group, its parent company.

It's a significant finding for Greater Boston, which suffers from a chronic lack of decent inventory.

The apartment market has long been a haven for skittish buyers in Greater Boston.

But soaring rents may be poised to shift that calculus, making renting as costly as buying in some cases.

The median rent for a two bedroom in Boston and its suburbs is nearing the $2,000 mark, according to a new survey by Champagne, Illinois-based rental market data cruncher Cazoodle.

That's a 13.3 percent jump this year through September compared to the same period last year.

It's also far above a handful of other cities that Cazoodle ran stats on, with Washington metro, at $1,875, the closest, and Chicago, the Twin Cities and Baltimore well behind these market leaders, so to speak.

So what does this do to the rent-versus-buy calculus?

That's what the nation's bankers are predicting in a survey just released by FICO.

Nearly half  - or 49 percent - of risk management officers surveyed at banks across the country don't see home prices climbing back to 2007 levels for nearly another decade.

By comparison, just 21 percent thought prices would rebound before the decade ends.
An even larger number - 73 percent - are banking on foreclosures being a major problem for at least another five years. About half, 46 percent expect mortgage delinquencies, the first step towards an eventual foreclosure, to rise over the next six months.

OK, I haven't exactly been breathlessly following FICO's surveys, so I guess I missed this, but the bankers are apparently feeling markedly sour as of late after a burst of relative optimism early this year.

So what does this mean for Massachusetts, and in particular, for the Greater Boston market?

OK, here's your chance to weigh in and share what you know. Fire away. I will feature the most scintillating entries in a post next week.

Now here are my questions for you.

For buyers looking at homes or condos, here in Greater Boston, or elsewhere, for that matter, what is your impression of prices and selection? Are there attractive options in your price range? Are sellers still holding out - or ready to cut a deal?

What towns and neighborhoods have the best bargains right now? Conversely, what zip codes are overpriced, in your estimation?

For sellers, what kind of demand are you seeing? Are you getting traffic at open houses? Have you had to cut your asking price? And if so, by how much? Also, are you using a real estate agent, or are you going it alone?

Half decent homes at more reasonable prices - that sums up we need more of here in Greater Boston.

We can poke fun all day at Miami and Las Vegas and other grossly overbuilt markets, but at least there is no lack of new homes to pick from.

But instead of new homes or at least older ones in good repair, we are getting more getting more foreclosures, according to a report out this morning by The Warren Group, publisher of Banker & Tradesman.

Foreclosures took a nose dive last fall, both in the Bay State and across the country, after the robo-signing scandal blew and revealed that major lenders were running shoddy, assembly-line style foreclosure mills.

Now foreclosure deeds - the last step in the process - are on the rise again across the state. And with the steady proliferation of distressed properties into the suburbs - I have one right around the corner from me here in Natick - the increase could cast a much wider pall than in years past.

I'm still waiting, but so far the double dip has failed to bring about the deep home price reductions here in Greater Boston that some frustrated buyers are longing for.

The latest Case-Shiller numbers show a 1.9 percent decline in Boston area home prices this July from July 2010.

Frankly, it's modest decline. And it's far from the wrenching realignment that seemed in order after the expiration of the home buyer tax credit last year sent sales plunging off a cliff.

As I sip my morning coffee, I am looking over a list of the nation's top 20 metro markets sent over by Trulia.

It was set up to mirror the cities in the much watched Case-Shiller index, the latest installment of which is due out later this morning.

And the Boston area leaps out for having the smallest average price cut on a list of markets that stretches from San Diego to Dallas to New York.

When Miami area homeowners decide to lower their asking price, they knock it down by a meaty 11 percent.

In Atlanta and Tampa, it is 9 percent, and in 11 other markets the average cut weighs in at a still substantial 7 to 8 percent.

But in Greater Boston? Our home sellers can muster up only a relatively measly 5 percent discount.

So how far have prices fallen in the Boston area since the peak of the bubble in 2005?

Well, about a whopping 3 percent, according to quarterly numbers put out by the Massachusetts Association of Realtors.

We do a lot of jabbering on this blog about the big decline in home prices.

And yes, statewide, we have been hit pretty hard - nationally even worse.

But when it comes to Boston and the cities and towns that make up its western and southern suburbs, it's a much different picture.

So says Trulia in its latest American Dream survey.

More than 65 percent of Millennials consider home ownership as part of their "personal American dream," according to a recent Harris Interactive poll commissioned by the real estate website. R

It's an age group - 18 to 34 - where renting has supposedly become the new ideal amid the never ending downturn in home sales and prices.

In fact, the Millennials are almost as bullish as the somewhat older Gen Xers, 66 percent of whom are still sold on the idea of homeownership.

Yet it's the Baby Boomers who are the most bullish of all. Of those in their pre-retirement years, 74 percent are still high on homeownership, with the number rising to 76 percent for those 55 and older.

One of the biggest trends in real estate now is also largely one of the most under-reported as well.

As homeowners find themselves unable to sell and move up, they are staying put and fixing up instead.

The big renovation/remodeling indexes, typically focused on larger projects, have not really picked up on this.

But think about it, what are you hearing about when you chat with your neighbors or friends? I know I hear about practical, budget-friendly fix-ups designed to make a house more livable for the long-term, with resale value a secondary thought.

BuildFax is hoping to fill this info void, with a new index that tracks permits pulled.

OK, you can pick Bermuda if you want, but I am thinking much more locally, such as Greater Boston.

My inspiration on this chilly but bright Monday morning comes from CNN Money's list of the top 100 places to live.

There are five Boston area towns on the list - thanks to Banker & Tradesman for pointing this out. Milton is No. 2 on the CNN Money list, followed by, in no particular order, Sharon, Acton, Chelmsford and Easton.

All fine towns, but reading the descriptions, it's hard not to have the sneaking suspicion that these communities were simply drawn out of a hat.

The kid who got busted after turning his apartment on a quiet Arlington Street into an urban pot farm got me thinking.

Despite the windows being covered with dark plastic, neighbors of the $520,000 Cleveland Street duplex, some of whom have lived on the street for decades, never noticed anything amiss.

Still, the college student has good taste in real estate. After all, you could do worse that Arlington - you could easily shell out $550,000 to $600,000 to buy a home in the area.

There were a couple stories after that about even more flagrant neighbor antics - this Roxbury house was being used as a brothel.

When you are looking at buying a house or condo, you inevitably end up gambling when it comes to your new neighbors.

The short answer is everywhere else but here.

A survey just out by HomeGain suggests a big shift in attitudes toward the real estate market.

Half of all homeowners across the country now believe prices are headed down over the next six months.

That's a marked increase from the second quarter, when just 30 percent of homeowners were bracing for more price declines.

Despite now years of falling sales and prices, the ever optimistic American homeowner has been confidently predicting a real estate market turnaround is just around the corner. Until now that is.

Yet as usual, homeowners here in the Bay State, are once again defying common sense as they buck this trend towards greater realism.

If you have money to burn and want your children to go to school in Dover - where the median sale price tops $1 million - well then go for it.

I'd still take a bookworm in a middling school system any day - I think chasing academic brands is foolish.

But that's just me. I must fess up here - I hated (K-12) school and spent as much of my time buried in a book - often at home - as possible.

Still, even here in pricey Greater Boston, most of us can't buy our way into the elite towns - and maybe wouldn't if we could.

Boston magazine's ranking of the area's schools has some big flaws, but at least it provides a rough sketch of what's out there. (The Dover-Sherborn district is No. 1 on the magazine's list.)

In my post yesterday about town/school shopping, I thought woodenhippo offered up a good, no nonsense analysis of how to squeeze some value out of the rankings.

So says Clear Capital in its latest survey of real estate values across the country.

Plummeting consumer confidence and stubbornly high unemployment could make for a tough fall and an even gloomier winter, the housing market tracker predicts.

Don't worry. I am sure everyone is feeling a lot better now after Obama's big jobs speech last night!

Still, Greater Boston heads into the fall in a better position than many other markets.

If so, well then join the club.

An often overlooked problem in our now completely dysfunctional housing market is the bruised and battered seller.

Yes, buyers are increasingly hard to find as the bad economic times roll on and home prices fall again.

But sellers who have a half decent home to unload - at a reasonable price - are the other endangered species out there in the real estate jungle.

And it is an especially chronic problem here in the Greater Boston housing market, which is overloaded with overpriced, aging homes in need of work.

Fred Breimyer, regional economist for the FDIC in Boston, offered up a telling stat when I caught up with him the other day.

Boston is one of the cities that led a modest June rebound in prices, according to the latest Standard & Poor's/Case Shiller report.

The Hub was behind only to Chicago and Minneapolis, with a 2.4 percent gain in home prices in June. Chicago led the 20 cities covered by the Case-Shiller index with a 3.4 percent gain.

Monthly numbers, especially when you are dealing with the spring market, the traditional sales season, can be tricky if not downright misleading. A lot of this is just probably hype based on season changes.

In fact, on a year-over-year basis, home prices are actually down in the Boston metro market by 2.1 percent.

But there's the catch as well - the market began falling again a year ago and all we have to show for it is a lousy 2.1 percent drop in home prices? Hardly red meat for potential buyers.

The double dip in prices, at least when it comes to the core of the Boston market, so far is shaping up to be fairly wimpy. Sure, sales are down and have yet to recover, but prices remain extremely sticky.

Anyone banking on the Boston area finally become a buyers' market may have a very long wait ahead of them.

Life, liberty, and a guaranteed, rock bottom mortgage rate?

A proposal for a great, big national mortgage refi party may turn out to be more than talk radio/blog fodder after all.

The Obama Administration is studying plans that would guarantee a 4 percent interest rate for tens of millions of homeowners with federally backed mortgages, The New York Times reports.

I blogged about the proposal a couple weeks ago after hearing one of the proponents, a Columbia Business School prof, make the pitch on Tom Ashbrook's On Point radio program.

There are appealing aspects to the plan - bondholders, not taxpayers, would take the hit. Better yet, it would act as a giant stimulus plan for the economy, freeing up as much as $85 billion in potential consumer spending that is now being sucked into mortgage payments.

Moreover, it may not need Congressional approval, the Times notes. That would let the Obama folks sidestep all the Tea Party rock heads.

It may be a buyers' market in the rest of the country, but not so here in the Boston area.

Despite weakening prices, landing a half decent home at a price that won't break the bank is still challenging. And the closer you get to Boston, the harder it gets.

Just take Adam Waitkunas, who runs his own high-tech public affairs firm, and his girlfriend and now fiance, Kelly Mitchell.

They finally landed a Cape in Carlisle - but not after nearly a year of hunting that took them through as many as many as 30 homes. And not after having to drop hopes of landing in Lincoln or Weston.

It's been a tough year for home sales in Massachusetts, which are down more than 16 percent so far compared to the same period in 2010.

But in a break from this downward spiral, Bay State homes sales actually jumped 7 percent in July, reports The Warren Group, publisher of Banker & Tradesman.

It was the first increase since January.

So are we finally seeing the start of the long-awaited rebound in the real estate market?

This stat in a Globe story yesterday on poverty in Western Massachusetts jumped off the page at me.

The study paints a stark picture of two commonwealths, in which the gap between rich and poor, east and west is growing. For example, the inflation-adjusted median income of affluent families in Greater Boston has grown 54 percent since 1979, to $230,000 from $150,000 a year, largely due to high-paying technology jobs.

This paragraph goes a long way to explain a phenomenon that often stumps both newcomers to the Boston area's high-priced housing market and veterans as well. Given declining population, an epic real estate downturn and national economic troubles, how did housing prices get so high here and why have they been so stubborn coming down?

It's the classic fantasy, returning to the neighborhood you grew up in to buy back your childhood home.

Back in the "olden days," as my five-year-old daughter calls them - though of course to her that's anything that happened before she was born, but no matter - it was more common for two or three generations of a family to live under the same roof.

But with the birth of the self sufficient, nuclear family after World War II, those days are long gone. The house and town we grow up in often has no bearing on where we eventually land. By the time we are out of college, mom and dad have already downsized to a condo or moved to a warmer climate.

That certainly was my experience. I grew up in a nice, 1970s subdivision in Norfolk, a commuter town with lots of woods and farms about 30 miles south of Boston. By a fluke, really, my sister Sandra still lives in town, so occasionally I drive by four bedroom colonial I grew up in at 8 Noon Hill Ave.

It always looks smaller than it did when I was living there - the current owners, I'm told, have taken out all that dark, 1970s wood paneling and have painted the walls. Probably stripped out the powder blue and rose red carpet as well.

A pair of  Columbia Business School profs have come up with a rather unique way to fix the nation's woes - they want to throw a great, big mortgage refi party for homeowners across the country.

R. Glenn Hubbard, dean of the Columbia Business School, and Chris Mayer, a professor of finance and economics and the school's senior vice dean, would like to refinance 30 million mortgages across the country down to a once unimaginable 4 percent.
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The duo contend this would both stabilize the reeling housing market while providing a $60 billion a year boost to an increasingly troubled economy as well. The average homeowner would wind up with hundreds of additional dollars to spend - money that is now being sucked into mortgage payments.

Mayer appeared on Tom Ashbrook's On Point radio program yesterday morning to tout the proposal.

Not exactly a pair of Ivory Tower lefties, Hubbard chaired the Council of Economic Advisors under President George W. Bush.

There's both much to be said for this idea - and some reasons to be concerned as well.

If so, you are not alone.

Just over half of all agents surveyed by the Massachusetts Association of Realtors said sales in their offices have taken a hit as a result of appraisals that came in under listing prices.

A significant number of those who answered yes had seen as many as three to four sales hit by low appraisals, which, if they don't kill a sale, can lead to some frantic last minute restructuring.

In fact, the Bay State numbers are significantly worse than the national numbers, which have been rising as well. The National Association of Realtors reported that 16 percent of all sales fell through in June, up from 9 percent in June of 2010. Low-ball appraisals were the main culprit, the trade group contends.

For a growing number of would-be home sellers and buyers, the numbers appraisers are throwing out are increasingly disconnected with reality.

It is now cheaper to buy a house than rent an apartment in 74 percent of the nation's largest metro markets, Trulia's latest Rent vs. Buy Index finds.

That is just about everywhere else except for Greater Boston, which is one of the few holdouts in this trend towards dramatically cheaper homes.

OK, it's hardly a surprise that Las Vegas, the original foreclosure basket case, tops the list of markets where it's far cheaper to buy than rent.

The same goes for Detroit, where you could probably pick up a home for practically nothing if you are willing to take your chances on the sputtering Motor City.

But there are also a lot of fairly attractive metro markets where buying a home now makes more sense than renting.

It's a group that includes Baltimore and Charlotte, Atlanta and Minneapolis, Chicago and Sacramento.

Yet while home prices have plunged around the country, the decline in the Boston area has been far more tentative.

That's the Obama Administration's latest brainstorm on how to fix our ever more messed up housing market.

The Home Affordable Modification Program - now that's a mouthful - is seeking proposals from investors on what to do with hundreds of thousands of foreclosed homes sitting empty and helping drag the housing market down.

And the feds appear to be reaching out to hedge funds and other deep-pocketed investors who can scoop up large tracts of homes and convert them into rentals, The Wall Street Journal reports.

Anything is probably better than Washington's current policy of muddling/sleep walking through one of the worst housing downturns in modern history - the Journal lauds the Obama folks for looking at a private market solution.

But if the game plan is to turn all these foreclosure specials over to the big boys and girls, what happens to the small investors out there looking for a shot at fixing up a few homes and renting them out?

OK, here's my take: Sell your house first, move to a rental, and then focus on buying.

Why put yourself through the stress of trying to buy a new home while you sell your old one?

A high-wire act even during the best of times, selling while buying has become even more difficult as the pool of credit worthy buyers willing to take on a chance on falling market dwindles.

Instead, by selling first, you have the flexibility of a first time buyer coupled - hopefully - with a little cash in your pocket.

That's my take, though I suspect I am in the minority here. What's yours?

Really, this is a foolish game, trying to predict what quarter home prices will start to turn around.

Yet every housing tracker out there does it, dutifully rolling out their latest home price predictions every quarter or so, trying to pinpoint at what time in the future prices will being their long-awaited turnaround.

The latest entry in the predictions game is Fiserv, which has pushed back by another three months the date at which it believes the market will shift into recovery mode.

Bynxers thinks he's found a solution to Greater Boston's home price conundrum. He's even dubbed it the "Third Way."

I'll give him A for creativity, but I think it boils down to another variation on a now well worn path - moving to a cheaper home well beyond the 495 ring and settling for an epic commute.

Here's how Bynxers, who has managed to wrangle three days of telecommuting a week from his boss, pitched his idea in a recent comment.

Like a lot of people, I thought once a debt default had been averted, things would go back to normal.

Normal as in sluggish economy and messed up housing market - all familiar terrain right now.

I even suggested in my post last Monday that avoiding a debt default had averted Armageddon in the housing market.

Now it looks like I wrote too soon.

OK, so Congress, despite the block headed posturing of the last few weeks, wasn't so completely senseless as to force the United States to default on its debts, effectively pushing the economy off the cliff. But it came pretty darn close - earning an unprecedented 82 percent disapproval rating.

In fact, the long and debilitating debt default debate, coupled with Standard & Poor's decision to jump on the bandwagon and downgrade the federal government's long-held AAA debt rating, has taken its toll.

And anyone who suggests all this won't have a profound impact on the housing market is beyond clueless.

OK, the idea is completely loopy, but you know what they say about California being a trend setter.

So it will be interesting to see whether a proposal out in the Golden State to ban all foreclosures - and force banks to refinance homes at lower rates - makes it onto the ballot.

Sacramento resident David Benson is on a mission to gather more than 800,000 signatures to put a question on the state ballot that would radically amend the California constitution.

Benson's proposal would make homeownership a "fundamental right." And it would not only bar banks from foreclosing on homeowners who fall behind on their mortgages, but it would also require lenders to refinance a mortgage at a lower rate - and a minimum cost - within 45 days!

Wow, now how's that for service? That's not all, with banks also required to knock down the principal on underwater homes as well.

Of course, this looks more like a way of sticking it to the banks - a protest vote - than a serious proposal.

Still, I wouldn't underestimate the level of anger out there toward the banking /lending industry that proposals like this one illuminate.

Home prices bounced back somewhat during the spring selling season.

But it wasn't enough to reverse the double dip, with prices still down nationally nearly 8 percent for the year, Clear Capital finds in a newly released report.

The Northeast, and in particular the Greater Boston market, fared considerably better than the rest of the country. The Northeast saw prices rise 5.2 percent this spring over the abysmal winter months. That said, home prices are still down nearly 3 percent from July 2010.

Greater Boston, which the survey defines as a broad stretch encompassing the pricey western suburbs, posted a 7.6 percent gain in home prices, spring over winter. Prices, however, are still down 1.4 percent from July 2010.

The New York metro area fared even better. Home prices rose 6.7 percent in the spring, for a net gain, year over year, of 1.5 percent.

Still, as far as home prices go, this may be as good as it gets this year. We are now in the doldrums of the summer market, and if you couldn't find a buyer this spring, you are either looking at price reduction or pulling your home off the market.

The more things change, the more they stay the same in our perpetually inflated Greater Boston housing market.

Prices may be coming down again, but it has been a long, slow and grudging decline here in the Boston area. And if you look at towns within the 128 belt, well it's hard to see all that much of a drop in prices from the peak years of 2004/2005.

Frankly, if you have a half decent house and don't have to sell, why would you right now?

That brings me to jhwilly's lament yesterday in the comments section on my post about the endangered species of the housing market, the move-up buyer.

Here's an interesting take from Calculated Risk on the endangered species of the housing market - the move-up buyer.
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First time buyers have increasingly become the sole source of demand in the sputtering housing market. After all, all they have to do is give notice to their landlord.

By contrast, homeowners looking to trade up can't move up until they can find a buyer for their home.

And, of course, the family selling the home you want to buy may be faced with the same dilemma, and so on.

It's a chain of transactions that during good times we all take for granted, but during bad times, can become highly problematic.

Maybe, if Congress can get its act together and pass a compromise bill today to keep Uncle Sam from becoming the biggest deadbeat in history.

If the federal government were to start default on its debts, it could have catastrophic consequences for the economy and, by extension, the housing market.

A still stubbornly high unemployment remains one of the biggest obstacles to a housing recovery, argues Greg McBride, senior financial analyst at Bankrate.com.

A prolonged debt default could very well trigger another severe downturn, throwing another 2 million people out of work while sending interest rates soaring.

That's obviously just what the housing market needs right now as it flounders amid another round of falling prices and sales.

"The downside of a default is massive," McBride said. "It is the reason we teach our kids to look both ways before they cross the street."

The doomsday-like debt default countdown looms over the housing market like the sword of Damocles.

After all, along with an economy that seems perilously close to shifting into reverse, the debt debate fiasco down in Washington is not exactly a confidence builder for potential home buyers.

But has it begun to truly hit home with individual buyers, prompting them to put decisions on hold or even bail after putting homes under agreement?

The Case-Shiller housing indices are the gold standard of the real estate industry, tracking resales of existing homes across the country.

But my head is aching after reading the press release on the numbers by the S&P Indices, which puts out the crucial market gauge devised by Karl Case, professor emeritus at Wellesley College, and Yale University economist Robert Shiller.

The numbers clearly show continued year-over-year declines in housing prices - Greater Boston prices were down 3.2 percent in May.

Yet the press release starts off touting seasonal increases seen in several cities in May over this April, the heart of the spring sales season.

Home sales plunged more than 23 percent in June, the fifth straight month of double-digit declines, reports The Warren Group, publisher of Banker & Tradesman.

In fact, the 4,313 homes sold last month marked the worst June since 1991, when there were 4,243 sales.

Of course, that low point was set during another brutal recession that hit Greater Boston and New England particularly hard compared to the rest of the country.

The early 1990s were a tough time for the Massachusetts economy and real estate market here in particular. The 1990s may have ended amid the happier times of the tech boom, but the decade started with an epic bust that featured a collapse in home sales and prices after a big run up during the Reagan years.

Sounds familiar, but with national bankruptcy looming, it's not clear whether we get the happy ending this time around.

Maybe, suggests a new report by Radar Logic, which argues the weak spring market may be a precursor to even deeper price declines this fall.

Home prices nationally fell nearly 6 percent in May - the most rapid decline since September, 2009. Overall, year-over year price declines have been accelerating since June 2010 in the wake of the expiration of the home buyer tax credit, according to Radar Logic.

Come fall, prices will hit a new "post-bust lows," Radar Logic predicts

On that cheery note, have a great weekend.

Ah, all those poor buyers who bought during the bubble years. It's hard to find a more maligned group out there. Basically, if you paid some sky-high price for your home back in 2004 or 2005, everyone assumes you are a fool who jumped on the bubble band wagon.

But it turns out that maybe those bubble years' buyers aren't so foolish after all, at least when it comes to figuring out what their homes are worth now. In fact, they may have a better grasp of current market reality than those who bought later during the bust, or for that matter homeowners like me who bought just before the big run up in prices began, according to a new report by Zillow.com.

Steve Harney listed the many sources that make arguments for why it is a great time to buy. I am about to be eaten by bears, but so be it. Readers who want to know these reasons should follow these links:

The Wall Street Journal

CBS Money Watch

Forbes Magazine

National Public Radio

While the bears a tearing me limb from limb, here are some additional thoughts:

Price are down, some. Interest rates are great for those qualified to borrow. But don’t expect to see me in a short skirt with pompoms anytime soon. This is a better time than the mid-zeros. But it hasn’t turned me into a cheerleader, yet.

OK, most of us already know the National Association of Realtors has been lobbying desperately against the proposal in Washington to require 20 percent down on most mortgages.

But this is clearly more than just a lobbying game - rank and file real estate agents are also seeing red on this key issue.

Just take the results of this recent poll on the 20 percent down issue by the Massachusetts Association of Realtors, which found near universal opposition among agents to requiring hefty down payments.

On July 5th, Steve Harney published his top five important developments in real estate for the first half of 2011.

1. The government is making an effort to limit its involvement with the lending business with talk of closing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and mortgage reform in the form of Quality Residential Mortgage (QRM) guidelines.

2. After adjusting for the tax credit boom-let of 2010, negative sales volume data is tempered by increased pending sales.

3. Sales prices are stabilizing.

4. Foreclosures have been delayed by legal and procedural issues. Foreclosures are expected to resume, in large numbers, soon.

5. Everyone’s screaming, “buy now!” (except Rona!)

I’ve seen and heard Mr. Harney. He is very engaging and explains things clearly. I don’t always agree with how he uses statistics or with his conclusions. But, he is among the most influential writers out there. Therefore, he deserves a hearing here at BREN.

What is your take on these top stories? Do you think they are the most important stories?

Here are the four most expensive Boston/Cambridge neighborhoods for renters:

• Kendall Square - average asking price of $2,760.
• East Cambridge - average asking price of $2,732
• Seaport - average asking price of $2,711
• Charlestown - average asking price of $2,515

If you subtract out foreclosure sales, the downward trend in home prices starts to look somewhat less dire.

Yet does it really make sense to do this?

The issue recently came up in Philadelphia, where a recent analysis of that city's housing market shows that two-thirds of the latest drop in housing prices was due to foreclosures and short sales selling for dirt-cheap prices.

Check out this Forbes piece. It breaks down the various real estate indexes - Case-Shiller, Clear Capital - and looks at how they stack up with each other.

Given the profusion of real estate numbers and websites and firms tracking them, it's a helpful peek inside the sausage factory.

Still, I take issue with the main theme - the fluctuations of Case-Shiller or whatever your index of choice is don't really have much meaning for the average homeowner.

It's a safe, conventional argument, but it no longer holds the water it once did.

If so, I want to hear from you.

The nation's ten largest banks nixed nearly 27 percent of all mortgage applications last year, The Wall Street Journal recently reported.

That's actually up from the recession year of 2009, when the big banks turned down 23.5 percent of all mortgage applications.

In Vermont, Mississippi and Texas, the banks rejected 40 percent of all mortgage applications. Apparently Massachusetts and Minnesota were on the lower end, in terms of rejections, though I couldn't find the exact rates.

Three or so years into the recession, there is an increasing number of people in mortgage default who used to be part of the middle class. House owners who have savings can hold out longer through their periods of unemployment or underemployment. By cutting back on expenses and draining their savings, they pay their mortgages. Eventually, those who did not get reemployed at their previous level fell into default, as their savings drained down too far to hold on.

Early in the foreclosure wave, people who bought farther beyond their ability to repay and developers who were over-extended fell hard and fell early. Those no-longer-allowed mortgages -- that were destined to fail as soon as real estate appreciation stopped -- lead to the first wave of mortgage defaults. Massachusetts saw these early defaults.

The foreclosures and distressed sales now in Massachusetts are part of the second wave. The middle-class wave. The unemployment wave. According to Jeffrey Chubb, in Massachusetts and Boston metro area it is a wave, not a tsunami. Massachusetts, and especially metro Boston, remains below the national average.

But, for unemployed or underemployed house owners, it doesn’t matter how many there are. It matters that they are just hanging on. If you know someone who is hanging on, July 22 is an important deadline for them.

No, and for a very simple reason: The Boston area has a lot of things, but starter homes are not one of them.

We simply don't have the vast subdivisions of new homes, ready and waiting for first-time buyers that you can find in many Sunbelt cities.

That's not to say builders aren't putting up any new homes in Greater Boston - even in the worst of times, such as right now, a builder or two can be found adding a home or two to a subdivision somewhere out in Acton or Southborough.

But here's the rub: If that new home is built within the 128 belt, given that prices still remain near their bubble years' peak in upscale suburbs like Wellesley or Newton, you are likely looking at an overpriced McMansion.

So who's to blame for the housing mess?

Last Friday, I somewhat facetiously suggested that all those greedy boomers were responsible for the worst housing crisis since at least the Great Depression.

Now, to be fair, I want to give boomers a chance to defend their generation's honor - and better yet, blame all those irksome Gen Xers and Gen Yers for all our current housing market woes.

To get things rolling, I will start off with a comment by ISchmidlapp. He contends the younger couples in his town have been the ones leveraging to buy the McMansions, all under the guise of doing right by their children. By contrast, the boomers in his neighborhood were all happy to buy and fix up 1950s capes and ranches.

Well that's what economist Gary Shilling is predicting.

A true doom and gloomer, he's also forecasting a return to recession in 2012.

That said, Shilling's bearish pronouncements have been right at key moments, including 2008.

At the Fourth of July party, my family was abuzz with the New York Times article about big lenders modifying loans for borrowers who didn’t ask for help.

Banks are proactively overhauling loans for borrowers… who have so-called pay option adjustable rate mortgages, which were popular in the wild late stages of the housing boom but which banks now view as potentially troublesome.

We are never going to solve the question about fairness. I’d rather not try.

Let’s talk about whether this is good business on their part. Is it just good business to get some of the underwater borrowers out of option adjustable rate mortgages and into conventional loans? Doesn’t it make sense to do this for borrowers who are paying on time? Those borrowers are more likely to keep paying on time, since their payments are being held steady. The modification gives them a chance to start paying down principal. Or should modifications only go to those that are headed for foreclosure? Is it better business to stop defaults by giving a leg up to the most vulnerable borrowers?

The two big lenders, Chase and BOA, are using different tactics to convert these toxic loans into something more stable. Chase, in the example in the story, reduced the principal by $150,000. The borrower had started with a large down payment, but her option ARM had swelled her debt to $300,000, well above the 2006 purchase price of $259,000. $359,000 (corrected)

BOA, on the other hand, is modifying loans without reducing principal. They are waiving prepayment penalties, refinancing, lowering the interest rate, postponing some of the balance and extending the term.

The rental market has been a good place for many to ride out the real estate storm.

But it looks like the days of hanging out in your relatively cheap apartment and laughing at all those supposedly foolish homeowners stuck with big mortgages is fast coming to an end.

If it sounds like I am gloating, I'm not, though I am one of those supposedly foolhardy homeowners oh-so-smug renters enjoy poking fun at.

Dallas-based Axiometrics forecasts a nearly 6 percent jump nationally in apartment rents this year.

No says a provocative new study out of George Washington University.

The Federal Housing Administration was formed to help first-time and low-to-moderate income buyers get mortgages.

But it now finds itself backing mortgages up to nearly $730,000 in some of the nation's costliest housing markets, the report notes.

It is a change that came about in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis - as recently as 2006 the FHA wouldn't back any mortgages above $362,790, the GWU study finds.

But with housing prices having been in free fall for the past few years, those higher limits now appear to be helping the comfortably well off move into their dream homes, or at least one could argue that after looking at the study.

Goodbye July 4th and hello dog days of the real estate market.

If you haven’t sold your house by now, it’s time to either take a meat cleaver to the price or pull it off the market.

Look for lots of price reductions in the weeks ahead.

It's an odd looking house hard by the railroad tracks on Marion Street in Natick. Built in 1930 with no particular style in mind, it sits precariously perched on the downside of a steep hill, with no front yard and a parking-space/driveway the only buffer between the house and a busy cut-through road.

But it's a sad commentary on the Greater Boston real estate market that this clearly dysfunctional house, crammed onto a tiny lot by some Depression-era builder, looked slightly tempting to my wife Karen and me when we were house hunting back in 2002.

How things have changed. Today I thank my lucky stars I never bought it, the plywood over the front window at 17 Marion St. the telltale sign the never-ending foreclosure epidemic has claimed another home.

Just call it the dead cat bounce.

That about sums up yesterday's report by the Massachusetts Association of Realtors that prices rose by half a percent, even as sales plunged 20 percent.

Thanks to beermeister, who called the dead cat bounce first.

And even that may be a statistical aberration - the latest report by the Case-Shiller index, the gold standard of home price tracking, has Boston area prices falling .2 percent.

The Case-Shiller index was up overall by .7 percent in April over May, but, significantly, Boston was one of seven cities that saw prices fall.

And even that overall, national bump, as modest as it is, appears questionable. The increase reported by Case-Shiller was the not-seasonally adjusted number. Seasonally adjusted, prices actually fell .1 percent.

No way, contends the Massachusetts Association of Realtors, which wades into the down payment debate this morning with a provocative press statement.

In its monthly report on housing sales, MAR takes aim at a move in Washington that would in effect require most homeowners to put 20 percent down when buying a home.

That would mean a down payment of roughly $60,000 on a $300,075 home - the median price for a house in Massachusetts in May, our local Realtor group notes.

Of course, that looks like a bargain compared to what would-be Boston area home buyers might have to shell out. Given the metro market's median sale price of $417,000, we are talking a cool $80,000.

All sounds so reasonable, does it not? Yet I have some big problems with this argument, which would snuff out a potentially helpful reform to our severely messed up housing market.

The spring market was nothing short of a debacle for sellers.

As always, it began with some economists and housing market watchers holding out hope we might see glimmers of a rebound on the horizon.

And it is ending with those hopes thoroughly upended as the double dip in home prices unfolds.

That's not to say there continue to be some hot pockets here and there where home prices remain buoyant - we happen to have more than our share of those here in Greater Boston.

But the mood of the market clearly is heading down as prices continue to fall, the latest HomeGain survey finds, with a disappointing spring having led to a big increase in pessimism.

It's a favorite game of economists and housing market watchers. When your prediction of a housing rebound falls flat, just push off that rosy estimate until the next year.

Just take a look at Fannie Mae's revised forecast for home sales across the country.

Faced with a sluggish economy and a housing market headed south, Fannie Mae has revised downward its prediction of a 6 percent jump in overall home sales this year.

It's now down to 4.3 percent, with Fannie also predicting a decline this year in new home construction, compared to an increase it had been predicting.

But don't worry, just wait until next year, Fannie Mae's economists tell us.

Is Cambridge truly immune?

After all, as the rest of the real estate market heads south, things don't appear to have changed all that much in Cambridge since the days of the housing bubble.

It is enough to make Cambridge an object of envy nationally - The Wall Street Journal cites the country's academic capital as one of a handful of markets that are still near their bubble year peaks.

Cambridge prices are about what they were in 2004, hardly a down year, and 8.6 percent off their peak, the Journal notes. The median single family sale price in Cambridge was up to $730,000 year-to-date through April, compared to $600,000 during the same period last year, according to The Warren Group.

Zillow's home index, which includes assessed values of properties not on the market, pegs the average home value in Cambridge at $423,900, down .6 percent year-over-year.

The piece cites the obvious - Cambridge is home to MIT and Harvard and a relatively thriving jobs market. Yet the impact of Cambridge's booming economy on home values can't be overstated, with the city benefiting from breakneck growth in a trio of key sectors - life sciences, technology and higher education.

Where have all the housing bulls gone?

Fresh off the business pages at the Boston Herald, I jumped headfirst into full-time freelancing and writing for this blog in the fall of 2008.

Back then, even as the world appeared headed into another Great Depression, there was still a housing bull or two around to bait all the bears on this blog.

But one by one, Sunshine & Lollipops and the rest of the housing bulls have fallen off the comment boards, digging in for what looks like will be a very, very long wait for the second coming of the Great Housing Bubble.

Even economists, who just can't seem to resist the temptation to predict housing prices will fall now but will then rise at some other point that is always just around the corner, appear to be wising up as well.

Steve, our brave seller from Lowell who shared his frustrations with the current market, must be having some second thoughts right now.

Apparently he made the fatal mistake of having bought his now eight-year-old colonial in Lowell during the home price bubble. And, according to some folks who comment on this blog, that was an unforgivable error in judgment.

I'll leave names - or to be more accurate pseudonyms - out of this.

Still, it's worth taking a look at this barb thrown out by one of the regulars on the comment boards of this blog.

Steve bought a new home in Lowell back during the bubble years and has spent the last eight years spiffing it up.

He and his wife decided to buy the newly-built colonial after losing bidding wars for homes across the Merrimack Valley and Southern New Hampshire. At $309,900, it seemed a lot more reasonable than the other homes he had bid on, which were closer to $400,000.

Times change and Steve and his wife, who now have two young children, would like to take advantage of falling home prices to move up to a bigger house.

Under no illusions about the state of the market, Steve is ready to sell low in order to buy low.

With new hardwood floors, a professional paint job and some nice landscaping and a fence, his 1,700-square-foot colonial sparkles. And, at $289,000, it is priced right for Lowell's Belvidere neighborhood, while offering a nearly $20,000 discount from what Steve originally bought it for.

There's only one small problem - Steve can't find a buyer. In fact, he's having a hard time getting anybody to come and check it out.

So when he read my post suggesting that buyers face a dearth of decent homes at reasonable prices to choose from, Steve fired off this email to me.

There's a cruel twist to how the real estate downturn is playing out here in Greater Boston.

While home prices are on the retreat again, it may be actually becoming harder to find a decent home.

Rona, in this insightful post, argues the quality of homes on the market has dropped markedly over the past year or two. She's seeing too many homes in need of work or near major highways.

In fact, I'd argue that what we are seeing is a long-term problem that is actually growing more acute.

Let's face it, modular homes have an image problem. For years they have been confused with the old cheapo manufactured home on cinder blocks popular in poverty stricken rural hamlets.

Of course, these are two entirely different animals.

Modular homes are made of wood - and it's hard if not impossible to tell them apart from any other suburan home. But instead of being built on site by your local contractor, the individual sections are hammered out in a factory and then assembled on site in day or two.

Hoping to get the word out about modular homes, Westchester Modular Homes of Greater Boston has built a modular home/showroom, perched on the northbound side of Route 1 in Saugus. The showroom is a 2,900-square-foot "Bostonian," one of a number of different home designs the company is offering.

A relatively new company, Westchester was launched a year ago by a local North Shore home builder who for years had also offered modular construction, but had never particularly focused on it.

That said, there are a number of pros and cons for a home buyer to consider before going modular.

I have been seeing a dearth of properties worth buying this spring in and around Boston. Although there may be lots of houses on the market, many are overpriced and/or somehow unappealing to buyers, at any price. Sesw got to the crux of the problem. Sesw asked:

Is the quality of houses worse than 2010, 2009, etc. or are buyers just more discerning?

I ask you the same question. Buyers, are the houses out there worse, or are you just no longer willing to settle for less?

I was out there in 2009 and 2010. I believe the 2011 houses are worse. I am also seeing my client’s legitimate unwillingness to buy something that will not suit them as a long-term housing option. Some will compromise on condition, somewhat, knowing that they will improve it as time goes on. They are not biting on major renovation projects, or too-small properties, or locationally impaired properties, at any price.

Condition:
Part of the cause for this is that during the bubble there were large numbers of flippers out there who improved the condition of houses or sale (for a price.) When the profit margin for this disappeared, so did the flippers. Now, I am seeing many “pre-flipped” houses that need to be brought into the 21st century. My typical buyer with one to two incomes and one to two children do not have the time or inclination to take on that job. Also rehab money is tighter since the end of the bubble. The result is an old housing stock that is showing its age more.

The buying public who does not have the inclination, the funds or the skill to do the rehab. Result: a glut of houses for sale in need of major renovation.

Home prices continue to fall across the country, but the pace of decline is starting to slow, ClearCapital reports.

But apparently it is a different story here in Greater Boston.

Nationally, prices fell 2.3 percent, on a quarterly basis, in May, less than half of April's 4.9 percent drop.

By contrast, the Boston area home prices fell 4.1 percent in May, landing it on a list of laggards topped by the likes of Detroit, Hartford and Cleveland.

Now that's quite a turnaround.

The latest pending sales report is out, and the Massachusetts Association of Realtors is touting the "first year-over-year increase since December, 2010."

That's technically true, but it hardly tells us what's really going on with home sales, which have been lost in the shadow of ongoing drama over the double dip in prices.

A close look at the numbers hardly points to a revival, but rather how brittle the real estate market still is across the Bay State.

Given the tumult in the real estate market, it's an option that looks increasingly attractive.

The phenomenon of buyers sitting on the sidelines, waiting for the right time to jump into the market, is hardly new, though the numbers have grown as the housing downturn drags on.

But we are now also seeing sellers cash out and and renting, instead of buying again, until the market straightens itself out.

I know at least one real estate agent in the western suburbs who attributes at least some of the drop in sales this spring to sellers opting to rent instead of buying again.

Just take jj24, a potential buyer getting ready to move from Connecticut to the Boston area with her young family. Despite a juicy corporate relocation package with all sort of perks based on buying a home, the rental market looks safer to her.

Home prices have never been so affordable, beating even the 1990s on that score.

So don't get paralyzed by the short-term fluctuations of the economy - think long-term and go out and buy that house you have been pining for.

So goes this provocative piece in this weekend's Wall Street Journal. Given the play it is getting on various brokerage websites, it is fast becoming a rallying cry for Realtors across the country.

Home prices across the state and country are on the second leg of an epic slide down.

But in Greater Boston, home prices remain stubbornly high in many towns.

In fact, a number of suburbs have seen median home prices rise - not fall - this spring.

Our local housing market has the same problem it has always had: Too few well maintained, desirable homes at reasonable prices.

So when a home in a good location, good town and in good condition comes on the market at a reasonable price, it gets snapped up.

Here are towns where prices are rising, according to records section of Banker & Tradesman, published by The Warren Group. All numbers are median home sale prices, year to date, through April, compared to the first four months of 2010.

I've broken the list into two parts - relative surprises and the usual suspects.

When I wrote about overpricing, I made these general statements, based on what I am seeing around Boston:

…demand has not dried up and the shadow supply has not swamped the inventory, leading to rapid price drops. So there is a market full of buyers who are spending what the market is still bearing, in order to get a house that suits them.

Ehwhy questioned:

If demand has not dried up why are sales down?

Sales are down because inventory is down. Anecdotally, I would say that demand is as high this year as last, but good inventory is low in my area right around Boston. If you want a house with a view of I-95, there are some nice houses to be had, at a relatively low price. But, if you want a house to stay in long enough to make it worth your effort, the pickings are slim. The inventory is clogged with houses that are either overpriced, in need of huge upgrades, tiny, or poorly located. The ones that are well priced and worthy of living in are being sold quickly. Kihon1 bears witness to this:

kihon1 wrote:

I've been looking for a house for the past five months… I've seen gems of houses going for very little money, but in bad locations. I've seen other, similar houses, with water, mold, vermin, and HOLES in the walls, going for 100K over the nicer house…

… I also understand that if I buy a house that I settled for, I won't be happy in it. This is a big investment to be unhappy with in the long run. So I'll keep looking for the right house at the right price in the right area. And sellers should understand, there's plenty of potential buyers out there who are just like me.

The housing market woes just keep on coming.

Jumbo loan ceilings, which the federal government raised during the recession in hopes of boosting the ailing housing sector, are set to come tumbling down again Oct. 1.

That could have big implications for a high-cost housing market like Greater Boston, which has benefited over the past few years from the decision to boost the starting point for more expensive jumbo loans to $523,750.

That's hardly luxury real estate territory - in many upscale suburbs that would barely get you in the door.

But starting in October, we will be looking at a new, and significantly lower limit of $465,750, warns Greg McBride, a senior financial analyst at Bankrate.com.

"It doesn't help, that's for sure," McBride said of the impact on the housing market. "There are likely to be fewer qualified borrowers once those (lower) limits kick in."

Skeptical yet about all the media hype on how apartment living is the wave of the future?

If you're not, then you should be. This is a classic case of a short-term shift being trumpeted as a long-term cultural trend.

There's no debate the number of renters across the country has risen sharply at a time when foreclosures and falling home prices has tarnished the idea of homeownership.

In fact, the number of renters has grown by 692,000 each year since 2006, when home prices started falling, USA Today reports.

Yet there are some big problems with the now fashionable notion that renting is destined to become the new owning.

Reasons to be wary of the Renter Nation hype include:

One more time! The only way to know what something is worth is to use accurate recent sale data accurately. You need a Comparative Market Analysis. Anything else is folly.

Lance wrote:

Many buyers lack the skills and experience needed to meaningfully evaluate comps. But anybody with a web browser (or iPhone app) can look up a home's value on Zillow or check the assessed value online. These are the anchors that most buyers care about, far more important than asking price. So when a buyer asks why the asking price is 20 percent above both Zillow and the tax assessor, there better be a very good answer. "The tax assessor is wrong" simply doesn't cut it anymore.

The tax assessor is wrong. OK, it doesn’t cut it. It just happens to be true. I don’t have a bone to pick with tax assessors. They have a huge job to do and, at least, they set foot in houses unlike Zillow. Lance is entirely wrong that buyers care about assessed values or Zillow values. They may say they do, in surveys, but they don’t out on the streets.

Just for fun, I matched assessed values with sale price on properties that closed May 25 and May 26:

Assessed/Sale/Town corrected 3:30 5/31
$292,800/$300,000/Melrose
$396,400/$318,000/Needham
$326,800/$366,000/Medford
376,700/$360,000/Arlington
$317,700/$375,000/Waltham
$310,600/$373,000/Medford
374,000/$435,534/Melrose
$464,300/$472,000/Melrose
$424,900/$479,000/Newton
$512,900/$502,000/Sudbury
$521,000/$515,000/Lexington
$554,700/$570,000/Acton
$556,700/$562,000/Wayland
$515,200/$615,000/Wayland
$408,700/$640,000/Melrose
$533,000/$659,000/Belmont
$607,000/$670,000/Belmont
$579,000/$750,000/Lexington
$820,000/$685,000/Concord
787,000/$850,000/Lexington
$784,500/$845,000/Sudbury
$795,600/$860,000/Winchester
$1,013,200/$889,000/Wayland
$739,000/$939,900/Waltham
$848,000/$1,020,000/Brookline

Do you see a pattern to rely on here? I sure don’t.

The downturn in home prices has now blown past the previous lows set during the Great Recession, according to the latest Case-Shiller numbers.

Home prices in 18 of the nation's top 20 metro markets, including Boston, saw prices fall again in March. It marks the eighth straight month of declining home prices since the end of the home buyer tax credit pushed the residential market off the cliff.

March saw a 3.6 percent, year-over-year drop in home prices, following on the heels of a 3.3 percent drop in February.

Nationally, home prices have now slipped below April 2009 levels, the last low point of the current, and now years-long, housing downturn, according to Case-Shiller.

Ouch!

This has been a miserable spring for sellers.

Not only are sales down, but prices are down as well.

Sipping my morning coffee, I came across these numbers in the records section of Banker & Tradesman, which is published by The Warren Group, the Boston-based real estate publisher and data firm.

Market psychology is a funny thing. Just recall the foolhardy stampede last spring by buyers scrambling to close on homes in time to collect the $8,000 federal home buyer tax credit. A year later, you can get reap multiples of that as sellers slash prices, but buyers are waiting on the sidelines again. Go figure.

Here are some year-to-date numbers, which match up median prices for the first four months of 2011 with spring 2010. I note sales where the declines are significant.

Towns where sellers are feeling the most pain include:

If you answered no, well you are still in the minority.

A majority of Americans - 57 percent - not only believe buying a home still has potential as an investment, but that it's a better bet than the stock market or putting money into a retirement plan, according to a recent Fannie Mae survey on home buyer and consumer attitudes.

In a presidential election, they call that a landslide.

As home prices across fall again, that's the big question for buyers.

The median price of a single-family home in Massachusetts posted a 4 percent, year-over-year decline in April, down to $274,000, The Warren Group reports this morning. Sales plunged 28 percent.

Still, prices have a long way to go before they hit 2000 levels. That year saw the median price of a home statewide hit $185,000, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

The same is true, even more so, of home prices in Greater Boston.

While prices across the state have been on the decline, home prices in Boston and its far-flung suburbs actually jumped roughly 4 percent in the first quarter to $417,000, according to the Massachusetts Association of Realtors.

That's a far cry where sale prices stood for our metro market back in 2000, when the median price was $250,000.

And given sluggish paycheck growth over the past decade, that is a real problem.

That is the average length of time it takes for banks to seize your home if you live here in Massachusetts, according to RealtyTrac.

It's up significantly from 2007, when the foreclosure crisis kicked into high gear and the time between the initial filing by the bank and the auction was just under a year.

Now we are talking more than 15 months - a 25 percent increase.

Of course, back in more normal times, the bank would get wrest back the title to your home in a matter of six months or so if you fell behind on your payments.

That is still the case in many small states, but it is not so anymore in big government states like Massachusetts, New York and New Jersey, which have thrown up an array of regulations designed to slow the process down.

That's right, let's blame the bad market on all those stingy banks.

With the real estate market in a deep funk, one of the nation's top real estate franchises is taking a swing at the nation's bankers.

Century 21 polled more than 1,500 of its agents, asking what kinds of problems buyers are running into when it comes to getting a mortgage.

In one of the most pertinent findings, three quarters of the agents surveyed reported they had lost at least one deal in the past six months when a buyer was unable to close on a mortgage.

Other findings include:

Even the most shameless real estate market hucksters will have a hard time spinning this one.

Pending home sales actually fell .08 percent in April from March, the National Association of Realtors reported today. That's a more than 12 percent drop from April, 2010.

The news bucked widespread expectations of a modest increase in pending sales over March, with economists having predicted a 2 percent bump.

Those predictions, in turn, had spurred some market observers to even postulate that the pending sales numbers might show evidence of a market turnaround, or at least forward momentum.

But the real estate momentum right now appears stuck in reverse - both in prices and sales.

The National Association of Realtors will release pending home sales stats for the spring market later this morning.

Economists surveyed by Bloomberg are already predicting a 2 percent increase in April over March in homes across the country that have been put under contract.

No one is disputing the fact that even with this modest bump, home sales are still far below those of last spring, when the pending expiration of the home buyer tax credit stoked frenzied buying.

But some market observers are looking to the pending sales numbers as a sign of the market's momentum - according to this theory just about any increase can be construed as a positive development, maybe even a turning point.

Gas prices are spiking again. And higher costs at the pump already have potential home buyers rethinking long commutes, a new survey finds.

Three quarters of Coldwell Banker agents surveyed said gas prices are already having an impact on buyers' decisions.

It doesn't take a lot of imagination to figure out what this might do to sales and prices out on 495 and beyond, already struggling by comparison with towns closer to Boston within the 128 beltway.

Among the highlights:

The home buyer tax credit expired just over a year ago. But we will be living with the fallout from this disastrous government gimmick for years to come.

Buyers who rushed to close a home last spring and collect their $8,000 check have already lost that money and then some, Smart Money notes.

The median home price across the country has dipped over the past year to $170,000 from $180,000 last spring. That means a loss of $15,000 for the average tax credit buyer – almost double what they earned through the $8,000 credit.

And those who rushed to buy homes last spring here in the Bay State aren’t looking that much better.

Get this - the median price of a home here in the Bay State could fall to a somewhat more affordable sounding $250,000 by year end, if the forecasters have it right.

Home prices could fall another 3-to-6.5 percent across the Bay State over 2011, finds a new Fiserv Case-Shiller report. The report doesn't get into specific sale prices, but I took the high end of the range and did a little math.

A 6.5 percent decline would push the current statewide median price, now at $276,250, down to $250,000, if not a bit below.

Greater Boston could see prices drop another 4.5 to 4.8 percent, with the western suburbs - Cambridge, Newton, and beyond - falling on the higher end of the scale, the report finds. The Warren Group, on the Banker & Tradesman site, offers a good local breakdown of the Fiserv Case-Shiller numbers.

So what could that mean in terms of the median home price in Greater Boston?

Well it could knock another $20,000 off the median price, pushing it from $417,000, as of the end of March, below the $400,000 mark. (Regional numbers come from the Massachusetts Association of Realtors.)

OK, I'll take a shot at this: Later this year in Greater Boston and 2012 for the rest of the state.

That, anyway, was the consensus that emerged yesterday during a chat about the local real estate market I took part in on WBUR's daily local news show, Radio Boston.

Chip Case, the retired Wellesley College professor, offered a pretty detailed analysis of the national trends and statewide - I did my best to offer a more micro-local perspective.

I am drawing upon Fiserv for my prediction - which I am already beginning to regret as I write this. Fiserv and Moody's Analytics are predicting a bottoming out nationally in prices during the third quarter.

Condo and home prices have been remarkably stable over the past few years in such perennial hot spots like Cambridge and Davis Square, even as real estate market has gone haywire elsewhere.

There have been minor blips up and down, but no big comedown from the market's peak back in 2005, when the real estate bubble was just about to burst. Just a steady march upward over the years.

Judging from the $1 million-plus condo for sale in Davis Square I just spotted online, some sellers still believe they are back in the time of easy money and silly prices. OK, so it's new and in the heart of Davis Square, but it's a condo.

So is this just another mini-bubble waiting to burst, with the double dip in real estate prices that is sweeping the country finally bringing a well-deserved comeuppance to all those cocky sellers who so far have escaped unscathed?

This is the second blog in my series, Gubernatorial Real Estate Follies.

OK, just kidding. Still, last week I took a look at Gov. Deval Patrick's on again, off again hunt for a buyer for his $1.9 million Milton manse.

It seems only fair then to note that he is not the only New England governor who can't seem to come to grips with the reality of a down real estate market and find a buyer.

In fact, Rhode Island's Lincoln Chafee will likely take a big hit on his Providence home - that is if he can find someone to buy it.

Chafee, then a U.S. senator, shelled out $939,000 back in August, 2006 for a quaint, seven-bedroom Victorian in Providence's upscale College Hill neighborhood. Built in 1886, it includes nice touches like the original stained glass and woodworking.

But the house has proven to be an albatross for Chafee, who bought it just months before the former Republican was booted from the U.S. Senate in the fall of 2006 by Democrat Sheldon Whitehouse.

The number of homeowners stuck with negative equity is on the rise again across Greater Boston.

Nearly 17 percent of homeowners across the Boston area are now underwater, meaning they owe more on their mortgages than their homes are worth, according to Zillow's first quarter market report.

That's up from 11.7 percent a year ago.

Nationally, home prices have sunk below their previous low, set back during the recession in 2009, Clear Capital reports.

April home prices were .7 percent below levels last reached in March, 2009, the latest milestone in a now months-long slide in real estate values, the research firm notes.

Of course, the last time prices were headed south, in the aftermath of the global financial crisis in the fall of 2008, we saw a panicked Congress and real estate industry rush through the home buyer tax credit, which artificially buoyed sales and prices.

This time around, there's no home buyer tax credit to bail things out and lots of downward momentum to keep prices falling in the coming months.

Greater Boston weighs in at No. 15 on Clear Capital's list of  "lowest performing" markets, with a 6.8 percent, quarter-over-quarter decline in prices and a 2.2 percent year-over-year drop.

That's compared to 4.9 percent, quarter-over-quarter price drop nationally.

In How We Decide, Jonah Lehrer relates how the wording of a question can draw opposite answers from a large sample of medical doctors.

One group was asked:

The US is preparing for the outbreak of an unusual Asian disease. It is expected to kill 600 people. Two different programs to combat the disease have been proposed. Assume that the exact scientific estimate of the consequences of the programs are as follows:
If Program A is adopted, 200 people will be saved. If Program B is adopted, there is a one-third probability that 600 people will be saved and a two-thirds probability that no people will be saved.
Which of the two programs would you favor?

Of a large sample of physicians, 72 percent chose program A, the safe and sure option.

However when the same question was asked like this:

If Program C is adopted, 400 people will die. If Program D is adopted, there is a one-third probability that no one will die and a two-thirds probability that 600 people will die.
Which of the two programs would you favor?

Of a large sample of physicians, 78 percent chose program D, the risky strategy.

By changing of the wording - whether focusing on the possible saving of patients versus focusing on the death of patients - doctors can be manipulated into choosing a riskier strategy to avoid death (loss.) Doctors are good at science and math…

Doctors aren’t the only ones who are good at math but have loss aversion. Harry Markowitz, the Nobel Prize-winning investment portfolio theorist, splits his personal portfolio into stocks and bonds. His own mathematically brilliant advice favors stocks over bonds. Higher rewards have higher risk, more volatility, and intermittent loss. His little neurons didn’t like it and neither do most people’s.

So, what’s this got to do with real estate? Everything!

Gov. Deval Patrick and his wife Diane put their $1.9 million Milton manse on the market back in June, 2009.

With their children out of the house, the governor noted he and Diane were looking to trade in their long-time Milton home for a downtown Boston condo.

The move, not surprisingly, drew a fair amount of media attention. In a market where sellers battle for any scrap of attention, it was the kind of publicity most can only dream of.

But nearly two years later, the Patricks still own their five bedroom, nine fireplace Milton mansion on Hinkley Road. Built in 1900, the stately home boats nine fireplaces and three and half baths.

In fact, the Patricks temporarily pulled their home - which they first bought for $562,885 in 1989 - off the market last December. And they've yet to put it back on.

So what's the story here?

Pending home sales plunged again in April as we enter the heart of the spring sales season.

The number of homes put under agreement this April was off by more than 24 percent compared with April 2010, according to the Massachusetts Association of Realtors.

Yes, last year saw a mini-bubble as buyers rushed to take advantage of the home buyer tax credit, so that's a partial excuse, I guess.

But 24 percent is a big drop, anyway you look at it. It seems to suggest that base demand is still hovering around recession levels, even as the economy finally begins to pick up.

Homeowners who walk away tend to have good credit. And they are pretty savvy with their personal finances as well, FICO reports in a study that profiled strategic defaulters.

"As a group, strategic defaulters tend to be more savvy managers of their credit than the general population, with higher FICO® Scores, lower revolving balances, fewer instances of exceeding limits on their credit cards and lower retail credit card usage. This indicates that strategic defaulters display a different type of credit behavior than distressed consumers who miss payments," FICO states.

Before they make the big jump, strategic defaulters tend to open new credit accounts, according to the study, and, needless to say, tap them for cash before their credit lines are cut.

Basically, strategic defaulters, as a group, have seen substantial declines in the value of their homes and have concluded it no longer makes sense to keep paying, FICO finds.

Who knew?

Renters here in Greater Boston and across the country can expect to get socked by rising rents and a tightening market over the next few years, a new Harvard report finds.

In fact, after a dip in rents and a rise in vacancies during the Great Recession, both key indicators are turning sharply upward again, according to Harvard's Joint Center for Housing Studies.

Larger, professionally managed apartment complexes saw rents dive 4.1 percent in 2009, only to rebound 2.3 percent toward the end of 2010. That likely to set the stage for an even bigger spike this year.

The market is about to get a lot tighter as well, with apartment complex vacancies having plunged to 6.5 percent in 2010 from 8.2 percent the year before. The overall U.S. vacancy rate - which includes all rentals, not just in the bigger buildings - fell to 9.4 percent in 2010 from 10.7 percent in 2009.

The double dip we are seeing in home prices is being treated as some sort of stunning new development. As is everything in no today's no context, memory-of-a-gnat news media.

Home prices and sales fell again in March, according to both the Massachusetts Association of Realtors and The Warren Group, publisher of Banker & Tradesman.

The Bay State's median home sale price dipped to $267,250 in March, down 2.8 percent from March, 2010, according to the Warren Group. Home sales were down 14 percent year-over-year.

Yet it was only a matter of time before prices headed down again.

In fact, I would argue it's even good news, as in an alcoholic finally coming to grips with his drinking problem or a couple facing up to huge problems they had denied for years.

The latest Case-Shiller numbers don't look pretty.

Home prices fell or were flat year over year in all 20 major metro markets with the sole exception of Washington, with its overheated government-driven economy, according to the S&P/Case-Shiller Composite.

And in ten cities, home values hit their lowest point since prices began falling in earnest four years ago.

Boston area home prices fell 1.5 percent in February - which places Greater Boston in the top five markets with the biggest winter price declines.

Accelerated marketing has worked pretty well for large condo towers with hundreds of units that can be sold in an auction-style format.

Buyers have been able to pick up some real steals, while enabling high-rise developers to quickly jettison troublesome investments.

But we will soon get a chance to see how this tactic works with mansions, with an 11,800- square-foot Wellesley estate set to to be sold by May 25th to the highest bidder.

The seven bedroom, seven full and two half-bath, five fireplace home was built in 2008 and was last listed at $5.2 million. (That said, it also appears to have been under agreement at the end of last month for $4.5 million, though clearly this deal is now dead.)

Sales of new homes are picking up this spring, with new numbers due out this morning.

Economists are estimating a 12 percent jump when the Commerce Department releases its March housing report at 10 a.m., Bloomberg reports.

But any progress is likely to be tenuous until more people who lost their jobs during the Great Recession are able to get back on their feet again.

I did my own informal survey at a family Easter gathering this weekend.

Of 12 adults, four are now unemployed, or soon to be.

Everyone knows one, especially here in Greater Boston, where, in the eyes of their loving owners, all homes are above average.

It's the guy on the block who thinks his Colonial is worth $800,000 even as his neighbors are lucky to break the $500,000 mark.

OK, it's a little harsh, but I have taken to calling them delusional sellers. (I'm open to suggestions here.)

Of course, what makes this blog so fun is that everyone calls out everyone else on just about everything.

Jima contends I'm off the mark - all those sellers who start with a pie-in-the-sky price and then are forced to come down, one small price reduction after another, are doing what home sellers have always done. There's nothing new here, he contends.

Check out this mock apology from one avowedly "stingy" seller.

While my post on Boston leading the country in stingy sellers drew lots of "amens" from frustrated buyers, greblok was having none of it.

"I hereby apologize to Scott and all the countless unnamed people I've deeply offended by being a shrewd, nay stingy, seller, which is the only way I afforded a down payment on my current home. I don't know how I sleep at night because a couple from California wanted to pay about $75,000 more for my 1790 colonial than anyone else did. Or because I rejected an offer on a condo during the great recession until one came in at $54,000 more. Oh the unbearable agony of having offended so many finely tuned sensibilities."

I further apologize for being a shrewd, stingy, low-balling buyer, which was also the only way I could afford my next home. I will try to be dumber next time."

Wow, that's a great retort.

Yet equally fascinating were some of the responses it drew from the fed-up buyer camp.

It may go down as one of the more memorable real estate blunders in New England history.

Nicolas Cage shelled out a whopping $15.7 million to buy a Roaring Twenties mansion on Newport's waterfront back in 2007, when the real estate market was clearly past its prime.

Cage, whose personal travails seem to be growing by the day - witness his arrest in New Orleans - recently unloaded the 26 acre Gray Craig Manor estate for a relatively measly $6.2 million.

So are all those rich celebs finally getting their comeuppance? Is the bottom is finally falling out from the mansion market?

Well not so fast. While that would make a fascinating story line, Cage's Newport mansion mess is arguably the latest sad chapter in a personal meltdown being played out on a global stage.

In March, we discussed hurry-up buying near to death. Sometimes the conversation stopped over the question of who trusts who’s statistics. Do Assessed values correlate to sale prices? Is the MLS right about square footage? Are agent CMAs accurate?

Here’s where the data comes from:
• Municipal records showing assessed value and square footage.
• Deed/title records showing sale price and square footage.
• MLS records showing asking price(s), sale price and square footage.

James wrote:

“Yeah, I was wondering about sources of aggregated data. I suppose I can write my own scraping script, but I'd hoped someone else had already scraped and cleaned the data.”

I answered:

"If you could clean up town real estate data and sell it, you could quit your day job."

To which, James wrote:

“Actually, I've been thinking about doing just that. What data would you like to see?”

No wonder there is a glut of unsold homes on the market.

OK, I am being facetious here, but the latest survey from HomeGain illustrates a glaring intelligence gap in today's market.

On one hand, we have sellers all too eager to choose agents based on style rather than substance.

And on the other, we have buyers looking for substance over style, and, in particular, easy to visualize, basic information on homes.

Tuesday, I wrote about the high rate of Massachusetts born people who stay here in Massachusetts. I questioned whether the motivation to stay here is about family. Wednesday, my husband sent me this: Massachusetts is the sixth best place in America to make a living (and this is adjusted for cost of living!)

Today, I ask, are you here because of your job? Do you have to take a deep pay cut to go somewhere else?

Richard Barrington writes:

Massachusetts The high cost of living in Massachusetts is counterbalanced by the highest average wage levels of any state, helping Massachusetts rank sixth with an adjusted-average income of $38,664.86.

But is housing cost counterbalanced by income? Massachusetts has the highest average wage levels in America, so what? I reiterate what I regularly tell you all about averages: averages don’t tell a true story. (The execs making several million really skew this average.) I would be curious what the median is. But, for today, let’s look at the average.

Who knew? OK, I mean we all know home sellers around here are a particularly stubborn bunch. But the stingiest in the country?

So says Trulia, which just launched a new "home offer" report, which takes a mountain of real estate data and slices and dices it into a range of entertaining categories.

Boston is the top market in the country when it comes to stingy buyers, with an average price reduction of just 5 percent. By contrast, Atlanta home buyers lop an average 9 percent off their listing price and in Baltimore, 10 percent, according to Trulia.

Ah, the good old days. When you could get a bargain on a decent apartment and gloat while your friends grappled with Greater Boston's perpetually inflated home prices.

No more. After years of quietly riding out the real estate storm, renters across the Boston area are suddenly finding themselves in the midst of what could be the area's newest real estate bubble.

While home prices have started falling again in many towns and cities across the state, apartment rents have been on a tear.

Boston just barely missed the top 10 markets in the country in terms of rent increases - it ranks No. 12 in a list compiled by Bloomberg Businessweek.

What in the world are they thinking?

Some sellers are shooting for the stars again when setting the price of their homes.

And frankly it both irks and baffles me at the same time.

Take a look around - you won't have to do much digging to find a good example.

I have a few in my hometown of Natick, where a colonial owner or two suddenly decided they are really living in Wellesley, where the median price is $835,088.

For anyone who bought an overpriced home during the bubble, this spring has got to be particularly painful.

Home prices are hardly a steal within 128, but some buyers with a little more spending power than first-timers can make out all right. As you head out towards 495 and beyond, the deals become more numerous - though gas prices have gone haywire again so commuting is a concern. (I filled my tank the other day and it cost me more than $40 - haven't seen that since 2008.)

Basically, a home that you could not afford during the bubble years is suddenly within your league, yet you are stuck with your overpriced little Cape or condo.

But are you?  Here's one option that I am starting to hear more about - selling at a loss so you can move on and up.

With winter - cross your fingers - mostly behind us, home and condo sales are starting to finally pick up with the start of the spring market.

Pending sales jumped 40 percent from February to March, the largest month-over-month increase since the Massachusetts Association of Realtors began tracking pending sales in 2008. Condo sales were up 45 percent from February.

Blaming the weather for poor sales is typically pretty lame, but this winter provides an exception to the rule.

But don't be fooled by the big month-over-month increase into thinking the market has turned the corner - it hasn't.

The increase in pending sales in March over February is mostly a story about this winter's bad weather - the more telling figure is how this March stacks up with the start of the spring market a year ago.

Pending home sales in March fell more than 16 percent when compared with March 2010, MAR reports. Condo sales plunged 22 percent compared to March 2010.

Let me know now want you'd like to talk about this afternoon.

There is certainly lots of territory to cover, from whether it makes sense to buy now to finding yourself caught in a bidding war in a down market. Not supposed to happen, but inside Route 128 it does.

Here's the link to the chat.

So fire away - we'll talk more at 1 p.m.

It may look the return of the Ice Age this morning, but don't be fooled. The spring real estate market is here - and with it innumerable pitfalls for unprepared and naive buyers.

While things may be slower in the hinterlands, it's the same old story in many of the hotter towns and neighborhoods along and inside the Route 128 corridor.

Once again there are too many buyers battling it out for a limited pool of decent inventory - either new homes or older ones not needing expensive overhauls.

And brokers who have been around the block know all the tricks to stampeding eager buyers and getting them to check their common sense at the door to the open house. (Rona has written extensively on this over the past few weeks. Read and learn.)

My favorite is the broker at the open house who told buyers, all eager to see a house - in Burlington, I think - that sorry, he was now only taking "back up offers."

But how do we know those offers are real? Could this just be another broker ginning up the process with a few "phantom buyers?"

Does it really have to be this way?

Here's an idea tossed to me by a renter sitting on the sidelines.

Yearning for a meaningful decline in Greater Boston's perpetually inflated home prices, but apparently tired of waiting, he's looking into buying a vacation home while continuing to rent here.

Not necessarily here in Massachusetts, but in another state where prices are easier to get your arms around.

It's an intriguing idea, to say the least. Rent here and avoid breaking the bank to buy in Newton or Arlington and instead become a homeowner in pretty little East Nowheresville.

The fact is, armed with $150,000 - roughly the median price nationally of a home - and you can do well for yourself in many other states and metro markets.(Here that gets you a grim looking one bedroom, garden style apartment/condo along a busy highway.)

And really, unless you believe the world ends at 495, there are actually a lot of other nice places to live in this world.

After all, it's not hard to beat our crummy weather and terrible traffic.

Single-family home sales posted a 12.5 percent year-over-year decline in February, according to the Massachusetts Association of Realtors.

The Warren Group, publisher of Banker & Tradesman, points to an even steeper plunge - 15.7 percent - calling it the worst February since it began tracking local home sales in 1987.

Yet all real estate is local and often micro local. Even as home sales plunge across the state, in the more coveted towns near or within the 128 belt, half decent homes are sparking bidding wars.

OK, we all know renting is becoming an increasingly attractive alternative.

But what about taking the plunge and becoming a landlord yourself?

The numbers right now appear to be lining up for a long-term surge in renting.

The national vacancy rate is down to 9.4 percent - the lowest since 2003.

And the pool of renters is growing by the day. Foreclosures have turned millions of one-time homeowners into renters, many of them permanently.

There's not just demand, but a lack of decent supply as well. New rental construction has long been a laggard - there's growing demand not just for more apartments, but for a wider variety.

"What's your spring market verdict: Disaster or buying opportunity?"

That was the informal poll I took here last week on the outlook for the spring market.

I spent this morning tallying up the votes, following United Nations best practices.

Let's get the easy stuff out of the way first. And with one predictable exception, no one argued that it is a great time to buy. Shocker!

Basically, the comments broke down into two camps. The are the embittered hopeful, who are looking, but remain frustrated by home prices that still seem too high, and the perpetually wary who are awaiting another 10 to 20 percent drop in prices.

Here's a fascinating tidbit on the real estate market.

Nearly 60 percent of men recently surveyed by Rasmussen Reports said they believed their home is still worth more than what they borrowed to buy it for. That's compared to 47 percent of women homeowners polled.

Given the state of the real estate market right now, I'd vote with the women right now, whose bearish instincts on this question appear closer to reality.

Despite that contingent of bullish men, most homeowners now appear to be finally grappling with real estate reality after years of hoping that a home price rebound is just around the corner.

Less than half of the 720 homeowners surveyed the week of March 15th said they still expect the value of homes to go up over the next five years.

Other interesting findings from the Rasmussen poll, which focused on the real estate market, include:

It is one of the truly intriguing lifestyle choices created by the online revolution, the idea that you can ditch the corporate office and set up your life anywhere you choose.

A recent story in the Boston Sunday Globe magazine - featuring, among others, an internet guru who ditched Boston for the U.S. Virgin Islands - got me thinking about this. (Sorry, I'll keep trying, but I can't find the link.)

In theory, the ability for work from anywhere - whether at Starbucks or in a home office - should be liberating, and clearly, for a few, it already is.

Not only should it free more and more of us from the rat race of spending hours each day stuck in traffic, but it should also open up a much broader range of choices in the real estate market as well.

With laptop in hand, you, too, should be able to ditch the corporate office and move to the hinterlands. Sure, that could mean Fargo or some exotic island, but more practically it might open up much less expensive choices beyond the 495 ring that would seem impractical if tethered to a long commute to Boston.

Yet it remains just a theory, as anyone who has checked out the difference between 128 and 495 home prices can tell you.

In a fall market, during the current recession, I had clients who were involved in a bidding war in one of the “usual suspect” towns. The offers where collected on Monday. I was told that there were 16 of them. My clients were within market value, and were roughly $20,000 over asking price. The property sold for $102,000 over asking price. (This property had an asking price between $700-900,000.)

Bidding wars are still happening through the recession. They are happening outside of “silly season” (as one of the commenters called the tax credit period.) Here is the asking price and sale price information for hurry-ups in the usual suspect towns, Arlington, Brookline, Belmont, Cambridge, Lexington, Needham, Newton and Wellesley for the past six months.

Asking price// Sale price
$329/$329
$339/$338
$349.9/$350
$379/$390
$379/$370
$385/$379
$398/$350
$399/$381
$399/$399
$400/$400
$419/$418,4
$439/$449
$439/$458
$440/$439
$449/$475
$459/$450
$460/$450,5
$464,5/$445
$465/$486
$495/$457,5
$499,9/$500
$510/$482,5
$519/$510
$525/$530
$525/$536
$529/$529
$529/$527
$530/$525
$550/$546
$557/$550
$572/581,9
$589/$589
$595/$595
$599/$620
$599/$654

I am already seeing the hurry-up at work this early spring. Are you?

A little known real estate industry trade group makes for an unlikely whistle blower.

Yet check out this story from Fox Business.

The Mortgage Insurance Companies of America were warning the Federal Reserve and other bank regulators in 2005 and 2006 that disaster loomed.

The warnings, in a stream of letters from the trade group to the Federal Reserve and the FDIC, turned out to be right on the mark. Concerned about a rising tide of subprime lending, MICA highlighted 15 states that were likely to lead the way down with a flood of foreclosures, including Nevada, California and Florida.

Of course, as the Fox story pointedly notes, Ben Bernanke, now chairman of the Federal Reserve, was countering such concerns with happy talk. In a now infamous 2005 TV appearance, Bernanke called a housing crash a "pretty unlikely possibility." (Bernanke wasn't Fed chairman yet - at that point he was chairman of White House's Council of Economic Advisors.)

Thanks for the heads up, Ben.

Today and tomorrow, I am answering Lance’s request for data on what hurry-up houses are fetching, compared to their asking prices.

Today, I am posting some towns that are not known for their bidding wars: Natick, Medford, Watertown, Waltham and Somerville. These are all hurry-ups during the fall and winter seasons which stuck and closed. Data from MLS for the past 6 months for all single family homes with 5 or fewer days on the market.

Asking price // sale price
$99/$78
$139/$172
$199,9/$199,9
$230/$220
$298,9/$298,9
$299/$299
$300/$275
$324,9/$324,9
$339,9/$327
$355/$375
$359,9/$350
$359/$349
$359/$352
$369/$369
$375/$375
$378/$375
$379/$382
$384,9/$380
$389,9/$392
$398,750/$400
$399/$411
$399,9/$385

Well, it had better be a lot. Amid the hand-wringing in Washington over whether to formally require 20 percent down payments, out in the hinterlands the future is already here for many home buyers.

The average down payment is now up to 27 percent nationally, according to a stat cited recently by Fortune and Reuters and attributed to the Mortgage Bankers Association. (I hope to get the direct link later this morning.)

Certainly it's consistent with what I have been hearing from buyers here in Greater Boston, with 20 percent down pretty much considered a given unless you are trying to get an FHA loan.

Of course, it's a lot harder to come up with 20 percent down in the Boston area, where you need to be ready to spend at least $300,000 to $400,000, and often more, to get anything decent.

I've been predicting a surge of bank repossessions, just in time for the spring market.

Turns out I was wrong, at least on the timing.

The theory was that once the robo-signing controversy was settled, major lenders would push ahead with all those home foreclosures they had put on the back burner during the crisis.

But while the major banks are insisting they have resolved their paperwork problems, they are continuing to act gun shy when it comes to lowering the boom on homeowners who have stopped paying their mortgages.

Ten of the biggest home lenders in Massachusetts combined for a paltry 250 foreclosure petitions in February, Banker & Tradesman's Colleen M. Sullivan reports. That's down from 1,651 in September.

Thursday and Friday, this week, I’ll be posting the asking price and the sale price of single family homes which sold in less than a week for the past six months. These were all hurry-ups.

But first, consider that asking price is an awful measure of whether a buyer is getting a good deal. I contend that asking price is a fiction created by the seller or the seller’s agent or both that reflects the wishful thinking of the seller or the seller’s agent, or both.

For a seller or listing agent to identify a price that is compelling for a buyer is both science and art. It is not so easy to finding a price that will make a number of buyers jump. The masters and mistresses of the bidding war do just that.

The ones who do it well are very good at Comparative Market Analysis (CMA.) It’s done by looking at the properties that are most like the one for sale, the “target.” The like-kind properties’ prices are then adjusted so one can compare apples with apples, by deducting value from the target for things that are worse and adding value to the target for things that are better.

Once they establish a market price, they list the house at or just below the market value, where they expect a number of buyers will respond. The risks: if the price is too high, no war; if the demand is lower than expected, it is hard to bring the price up again (although some do it.)

I do the CMA on the buyer’s side to help them establish the point where they are overpaying for the house. By knowing the walk-away point, a buyer can go into a bidding war without losing his/her/their head.

No need to wait for the spring home sales numbers to come out. Let's get a jump with our own, informal market survey.

Do you plan to buy this spring and if so, where and for what price?

If you already own a home, do you plan on selling and if so, why?

And if you plan to sit things out, why, and for how long?

The real estate market is taking a beating, but not along the core of the Route 128 corridor.

From Burlington down to Milton, home prices have seen only modest declines, if that, since the market's peak in 2005, according to Warren Group numbers I examined.

By contrast, home prices along 1-495, another vaunted tech corridor, have clearly taken a hit.

I compared home prices along the 128 and 495 corridors in my regular Forever 128 column, which ran in yesterday's Globe West section. I matched up full-year numbers, comparing 2005 to 2010.

Of a dozen communities stretching from Littleton to Plainville, all but one saw declines of more than 10 percent. Five saw decreases of well above 20 percent.

Median housing prices along I-495 last year ranged from $248,000 in Bellingham to $519,500 in Hopkinton.

By contrast, only four of 11 towns Route 128's central corridor saw double digit declines, with just one, Canton, approaching the 20 percent mark. Lexington saw a decline of 1.5 percent, while home values in Milton were off a negligible 1.2 percent.

A growing number of couples are saying thanks but no thanks to that proposition.

The percentage of unmarried couples buying homes and condos here in the Bay State is more than a quarter higher than the national average, which is hovering around 9 percent.

I will leave the Bible thumping to others. Rather, I question the common sense.

I am moving into anecdotal territory here, but I wonder, based on what I hear from my own
network of friends and acquaintances, how many unmarried couples are simply drifting into home ownership.

Maybe marriage is a sore subject. Or maybe one partner hopes the big financial commitment will prompt a formal proposal after years of fence sitting. Maybe both hope buying a house will make everything better.

Who knows, but it's a risky move even in a good real estate market and a potentially catastrophic one now.

Here's an emerging pattern that may hold out the best hope yet for an eventual real estate market rebound.

Home prices are falling again. And guess what? Sales are rising again for the first time since the multibillion-dollar home buyer tax credit expired last spring.

Homes sales across the country jumped 22 percent from October through January, even as the median sale price plunged to $158,800, Bloomberg reports, citing stats released by the National Association of Realtors.

A long-time newspaper buddy of mine has begun searching for a condo in the inner suburbs.

A renter for years, "Joe" recently met someone and now wants to buy. He and his girlfriend are open to a house, but right now are searching for a two bedroom condo.

And with most of their social life in the Cambridge and its environs, the two want to both keep within the inner suburbs and and stay below $250,000 as well.

That's turning out to be some challenging search criteria.

OK, in theory, the market is weaker than it was in the bubble years. But given Joe's experiences -  and the still steep prices he is running into in and around Cambridge - I am not so sure whether that assessment applies to the inner suburbs.

With the Middle East in turmoil, gas prices are headed up.

And that could have some serious implications for anyone hoping to sell their home this coming spring and summer.

Some energy analysts are already predicting gas will hit $4 a gallon and above by this summer.

So who does this hurt - and conversely help - across the Greater Boston housing market?

Well take a look at this Journal piece. It focuses on the waning fortunes of Homestead, about 30 miles outside of Miami. Once seen as a refuge for priced out buyers during the bubble years, has become a foreclosure trap, with one of the highest rates in the country. (If you are wondering, 44 percent of homeowners are behind in their payments.)

Some smart money is betting the surge of interest in the rental lifestyle may be more than a passing fancy.

Lexington-based Highland Capital Partners recently plunked down $6.2 million to help fuel the expansion RentJuice, a relatively new online platform aimed at agents, renters and landlords.

Now the San Francisco startup – founded by a recent Harvard Business School grad who did his field research talking to brokers on Newbury Street – is buying a beachhead in Boston’s thriving rental market.

RentJuice this morning announced its acquisition of smaller Boston-based competitor Kahoots, a move that will give the West Coast startup its first office in the area. It is also dropping prices in a bid to bring in more customers.

Of course, RentJuice is just one of a number of online players looking to leverage the growing interest in rentals.

The theory, crudely put, is that a more footloose and mobile Gen Y generation will choose to rent rather than buy for many years to come. The debacle in the home sales market, or so the thinking goes, will make those youngsters think twice before they buy.

The real estate market overall is in rough shape. And it's likely to get worse before it gets better.

But the key question, if you live here in Greater Boston, is worse for whom?

For if you just look at the numbers, homeowners in some of the more coveted suburbs and neighborhoods might reasonably ask "what downturn?"

Boston magazine's Best Places to Live issue just hit the streets. It includes a nifty chart, drawn from Warren Group data, comparing today's sales numbers with peak prices across Greater Boston.

At just a shade below $700,000, the median price in Lexington is up 11 percent over the past year and off just 2 percent from its 2005 peak.

Needham, at $630,000, is off just 5 percent from its 2005 peak,

And Wellesley? Well the median price hit $900,000 after rising 6 percent over the past year. That's just 7 percent off from its 2005 peak.

For that matter, Cambridge median prices are actually up - not down - from 2005, to $755,500.

There's a definite pattern here. Upscale suburbs, at least when it comes to prices, have so far largely escaped the downturn's wrath, middle income towns have seen a modest decline, while old industrial cities and poorer urban neighborhoods have taken it on the chin.

A growing number of home sales are falling apart and appraisers once again are taking the blame.

A quarter of real estate agents surveyed in January reported they were left scrambling when a low appraisal clashed with the sale price, according to the National Association of Realtors. Ten percent of agents reported they lost deals, with the other 15 percent saying sellers had to lower prices or put in more equity.

A third of home builders are also blaming low appraisals for lost sales, according to this USA Today piece.

Sounds like a theme we've heard before during this real estate downturn. I mean the real estate market would be on its way to a rebound if it weren't for those lousy appraisers and their persistently negative attitude towards home values, right?

That's what the big girls and boys of the real estate sales industrial complex would like you to believe, but I'm not buying it nor should you.

It's that time of year again and Boston magazine is out tomorrow with its annual ranking of the "best places to live."

I know you have all been breathlessly awaiting the recommendations.

This year's list is based on three major real estate/life cycles, with four towns/neighborhoods featured for those starting out, trading up and at the other end of the spectrum, downsizing.

So without any further ado, here's a sneak preview of the selections - and my even more scintillating comments on them.

Brace yourself, for I am going to sound like I just chugged the Kool-Aid at a Realtor sales convention.

I swear I haven't gone anywhere near Orlando or New Orleans.

But this could be a good time to buy - that is if you are brave enough to take the plunge.

Sellers are a notoriously stubborn bunch here in Greater Boston, but anyone looking to sell right now is going to have to come down on price. And, as I noted recently, they may have to update that tired kitchen and pretty up that dingy old bathroom as well.

For buyers, then, there are opportunities out there - provided you can stomach the downside of buying a home in a declining market.

And let's be honest here - if you are worried about where the market is headed, as you should be, there are some real issues to take into account.

This Bloomberg piece offers a great road map to all the challenges facing today's real estate market - and by extension buyers and sellers.

If I had to put my Natick fixer-upper on the sales block, I would bring on a broker to do it.

OK, I have no special love for Realtors. In fact, while most brokers I have dealt with have been upstanding individuals, as a reporter I have found it to be a difficult industry to get a straight answer out of.

It's as if every broker has gone gone through happy talk training and won't touch any issue or subject related to home sales and prices that might be perceived as even remotely negative.

That said, trying to sell your own home in this market can be a demanding, part-time job.

And if you and your significant other are already working 50-to-60 hours a week - and maybe even chasing little ones around as well - who has the time to do this?

That brings me to HomeGain, which is releasing a survey tomorrow that it contends quantifies the advantage home sellers gain when they team up with a Realtor.

Wow, now here's a doubleheader for you this morning.

First, Bay State home prices fell nearly 7 percent in January from a year earlier, down to a new median of $270,000, the Warren Group, publisher of Banker & Tradesman reports. Sales, by contrast, rose 5 percent year-over-year in January.

So maybe, just maybe, there is some significant relief on the way for the legion of frustrated buyers hoping to someday break into the still pricey Greater Boston market.

But an even bigger story is breaking nationally - concerns that national home sales stats may have been inflated by as much as 20 percent over the past few years.

I'm all for scaling back the mortgage interest deduction. But please, don't touch middle-income homeowners like me.

OK, that sounds decadently selfish. Let's balance the budget, just let me keep on deducting the interest on my Natick fixer-upper's $412,000 mortgage.

But let's cut the ideology here and instead look at this with that scarce commodity these days, common sense.

A close look at the interest rate deduction reveals much of its benefits go to homeowners with mortgages far larger than most in the middle of the housing pack. Check out this Forbes piece, which nicely lays out the argument for taking away this perk from the homeowners with outsized mortgages - incredibly the limit is currently $1 million.

And you can even use it for vacation homes.

How quickly we forget.

A growing number of homeowners are gambling again on adjustable rate mortgages.

And gambling is the key word here, as it always is with ARMs, which start off with artificially low rates and then reset after a few years.

Not long ago, ARM had become a toxic term, with adjustable rate mortgages having been blamed for helping fuel the foreclosure epidemic.

But now, with rates on 30-year mortgages edging up again, more homeowners are taking a chance again on ARMs, lured by teaser rates that are falling as the costs of traditional mortgages rise.

After rising to 40 percent of the market, ARMs fell to just 3 percent in 2009. Now adjustable rate mortgages are back to 7 percent of the market and headed for the 9 percent mark, according to Freddie Mac.

Memories are short, so here's a refresher.

A fresh coat of paint and a modest kitchen rehab can do wonders.

That's my takeaway from the now much debated anecdote I posted yesterday of the North Shore family who found a buyer for their Cape after lowering the price and doing a kitchen rehab.

Yes, dropping the price from over $400,000 to $375,000 was important.

But a tired-looking kitchen had been a turnoff for buyers, with the Ipswich Cape having sat on the market all through last year's spring market and into the summer, according to the broker.

Back during the bubble years, buyers went nuts over homes with hardwood floors, fresh paint and a little shine. Despite the downturn, that hasn't changed. We are talking about human nature, after all, and the importance of first impressions, however superficial.

In fact, homes where the sellers have taken a little care particularly stand out here in Greater Boston, which has an overabundance of older homes in need of work, and, more often than not, a lot of it.

Here's a success story for today's market. Warning, if you think you can sell your house with minimal effort, this one is definitely not for you.

I caught up with Kim Sandler, past president of the North Shore Association of Realtors.

She had just put a four bedroom Cape in Ipswich under agreement - it had been last listed at $375,000.

Sounds easy, but getting there was anything but that.

Is a Las Vegas-style housing meltdown about to come to a town or neighborhood near you?

That might have seemed absurd a year or two ago, but no more.

Now metro markets like Seattle, Atlanta and Minneapolis that were once thought to be "immune" from the worst of the housing downturn are starting to see big declines in prices, The New York Times reports. (Thanks Lance for pointing this one out yesterday.)

Yes, these were all markets that were so diversified and vibrant that many economists predicted they would escape the worst of the real estate downturn.

No more. Seattle prices have fallen 31 percent from peak - and may have another 10 percent to go. Things aren't looking much better in Atlanta or Minneapolis either.

Of course, no need to read between the lines. This is a great big warning about what may be ahead for Greater Boston, the king of the supposedly immune markets.

When it comes to new homes, small is beautiful right now. Ditto for retro designs – village colonials and wrap around front porches come to mind.

As they struggle to survive in one of the worst markets in generations, that’s one formula an increasing number of builders have settled on.

If you are a fan of the 70s' style modern home, with its collection of sharp angles and broad windows, well it looks like you are out of luck right now.

Still, while the classic look is in, some dramatic changes are being made when it comes to interior design. Let's just say once you step through the door, it's not your grandfather's village colonial.

Among other things, great rooms are here to stay, while sun rooms, hobby rooms and even living rooms are on the chopping block, according to local home marketing and research firm, PrimeTime Communities.

Basically, hello great rooms and goodbye traditional living and dining areas. Florida living in New England – yuk!!!

OK, so the Obama Administration's blueprint for overhauling the mortgage industry is finally out.

Actually, it's not just one blueprint but three - kind of a pick-a-plan approach.

All three would eventually give the boot to troubled government-controlled lenders Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, but how they get there is a different matter.

One proposal calls for a new government agency that would ensure a smaller part of the market - not hard to do given the feds have their fingerprints on 90 percent of housing finance as it stands now.

The other two proposals - like I said it's the pick-a-plan approach -  either call for a new agency that would only step in during times of crisis or simply wind down Fannie and Freddie and leave just the Federal Housing Administration to guard the shop.

Of course, it will all take years to work out, we are told. And oh, by the way, it's up to Congress to pick the plan and give its blessing, according to Tim Geithner and gang.

Call me cynical, but a lot of options and a lot of years sounds like a great big nothing to me as far as anything getting done.

While we are likely stuck with Fannie and Freddie for years to come, bigger changes may be coming a lot faster for home buyers.

Well count me as highly skeptical.

The Obama Administration is set to unveil today its long-awaited proposal to revamp our nation's messed up mortgage market.

Yes, today is the day where we will learn how the feds plan to unwind an untenable system in which Uncle Sam has become pretty much the only buyer of residential mortgages. As it stands now, lenders across the country write mortgages and then ship them off Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, leaving taxpayers as the ultimate backstop for the entire residential mortage market.

Of course, the other big shoe to drop is a proposal to revamp the standard mortgage.

While some have pushed for 30 percent down, the recommendation is likely to be 20 percent.

I'll put up another post when more details come out.

Falling prices can be good news for buyers seeking deals - especially here in high cost Greater Boston.

But these are tough times for sellers, yes indeed.

The number of homes sold at a loss, on the rise over the past six months as prices have gone into reverse, hit a new peak nationally of 34.4 percent, according to Zillow.com's just released fourth quarter report.

Here in the Boston area, homes sold at a loss hit 30 percent in December, up from 28 percent in December, 2009, Zillow reports.

The average Boston area home value is now down to $314,200 - or a 21.1 percent fall from the July, 2005 peak. Nationally, prices are down 27 percent from peak, Zillow reports.

And the amazing thing is we've just started rolling on this double dip.

That's one of the disturbing possibilities raised by a thought-provoking MIT study that's fresh off the presses, so to speak.

By one key measure, the U.S. real estate market remains significantly overvalued, despite years of price declines, with home values 15 percent above their long-term historical average, according to a report posted on the MIT Center for Real Estate's website.

This result comes when the price increases generated during the bubble years are taken out of the equation and the current market is compared to the norm set between 1977 and 2002, according to economists Gleb Nechayev of CBRE Econometric Advisers and MIT's William Wheaton.

Under this measure, half of all major US markets remain overvalued, in some cases, dramatically so. Metro areas where prices are still a quarter to a third higher than historic norms include Miami, Richmond, Tampa, Washington as well as its Maryland suburbs and Baltimore.

Interesting breakdown of the latest Bay State home sales numbers by Banker & Tradesman.

While homes sales - not prices, mind you, which went down - were up in December, it was no thanks to Greater Boston.

Most of the activity was found far from the Hub, in Franklin and Berkshire counties out west and Bristol and Dukes counties to the southeast.

By contrast, home sales in Greater Boston were a big drag.

That's the finding of The Wall Street Journal's quarterly survey on home prices.

Home prices declined year over year in the fourth quarter in all 28 major metro markets tracked by the survey. In all but three, the price declines accelerated over the third quarter.

On top of all that, the amount of unsold inventory just keeps piling up as well. And that's even with the temporary slowdown in foreclosures in the wake of the robo-signing controversy.

Ouch!

OK, home prices have begun to fall again in Greater Boston, land of the million dollar fixer-upper.

Check out the latest numbers from the Warren Group, the Massachusetts Association of Realtors and Case-Shiller.

But so far, the declines have looked deceptively small for the Boston area, especially if you are focusing on the Case-Shiller numbers. It's been about a percent in each of the last few monthly reports.

All right, yawn, wake me up when it get's serious.

But don't be fooled. On our present course, we are on track to see a more than 13 percent decline in Boston area home prices by late 2011, notes economist Dean Baker at the Washington-based Center for Economic and Policy Research.

Our comatose real estate market is finally stirring - and in the dead of winter no less.

Let's cut to the point. Bay State home prices have fallen for the first time in at least a year, both the Warren Group and the Massachusetts Association of Realtors  report this morning.

It is a decline that has been long-anticipated since the home buyer tax credit ended in the spring.

OK, that would seem like more bad news, but it isn't because of the second part of this emerging equation, rising sales volume.

Home sales, after going into a tail spin after the tax credit breathed its last on April 30th, have finally begun to bounce back again.

Let's go to the numbers.

I've always thought Greater Boston landlords and brokers were a relatively enlightened bunch.

But soon we won't have to guess at how much of a hold that bigotry of all types - including against sexual orientation - still has when it comes to sale of homes and the renting of apartments.

The federal government has launched a sweeping review of housing discrimination across the country.

It is the fourth such survey by Washington, which began doing such studies every ten years back in the 1970s.

This time, however, the review by the Department of Housing and Urban Development will take a broader look than in the past. For the first time, the federal government will also look at discrimination in rentals and sales against lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered individuals and families.

Can't imagine they are going to leave the Boston area, the economic capital of New England and one of the country's largest metro areas, off the list, can you?